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Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) Tuesday voiced outrage at a prosecution call to permanently shut down the independent bi-monthly Umuvugizi and to sentence its editor, Jean Bosco Gasasira, to a 26-month jail sentence for libel. The Paris-based press freedom organisation urged the judge who is due to rule in the case on November 13 not to follow the recommendation made on October 26 by the judge...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on Pakistani authorities to allow the news media better access to the Tribal Areas in the northwest of the country, where the army has been waging an offensive against the Taliban in Waziristan for the past three weeks. “We are aware of the risks for journalists, but the current lack of access to Waziristan for the Pakistani and foreign media is...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for police to do their utmost to find those responsible for a “cowardly” physical attack on leading Iraqi Kurdish investigative journalist Nabaz Goran, who has just left Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, to seek refugee in Sulaymaniyah to the east. The 32-year-old editor of the independent Kurdish-language bi-monthly Jehan (World) ( http://www.jehan...

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged Moroccan King Mohammed VI to order the release of a jailed editor and to put an end to the use of the judiciary to silence independent media. Editor Driss Chahtan of the independent weekly Al-Michaal is due to appear before a Rabat appeals court on Tuesday. In mid-October, Chahtan was sentenced by a minor court to a year in prison...

Albanian newspaper editor Mero Baze was beaten unconscious by a pro-government businessman and two bodyguards three days ago, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the prime minister’s office in Tirana Wednesday to protest against the frequency of attempts to intimidate journalists in Albania. Baze, who edits the leading newspaper Tema and...

Journalist AS Mani has been detained in Tamil Nadu on a criminal defamation charge. Mani, who edits the Tamil weekly Naveena Netrikkan, was arrested in Chennai without arrest warrant on October 25 as a result of libel suit by a local businessman. “Mani is the latest victim of Indian laws that criminalise defamation,” Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) reacted. “Misuse of the laws...

There has been an increase in attempts to intimidate Kyrgyzstan’s independent media after Kubanychbek Joldoshev, a newspaper reporter based in the southern city of Osh, became the seventh journalist to be physically attacked since the start of the year. He was badly beaten after his taxi was stopped by police on November 2, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. A reporter for the municipal...

Assailants badly beat Mero Baze, chief editor of the independent Albanian daily Tema and host of the prime-time television show “Faktor Plus,” at a bar in the capital, Tirana, on Monday, according to news reports. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the attack and called on authorities to bring the assailants to justice. Baze lost consciousness after the attack and...

Crime reporter Bladimir Antuna García was found murdered Monday night, according local news reports, after reportedly being abducted from a street in the Mexican city of Durango that morning. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on Mexican authorities to show their commitment to press freedom and the protection of Mexican journalists by immediately bringing all those...

Police in Kyrgyzstan should investigate work-related motives in a weekend assault that left Kubanychbek Zholdoshev, a reporter with the government weekly Osh Shamy, with a concussion and broken ribs, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Tuesday. Three assailants beat Zholdoshev as he was returning home from dinner in the southern city of Osh on Sunday night, the...