News

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed concern over two rulings in Pakistan clamping down on electronic media that represent a very serious backward step. Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) has ordered some radio stations not to broadcast BBC Urdu-language news programmes, while Parliament is preparing to ratify drastic censorship dating from the era of General Pervez...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) on Tuesday condemned the decision of a court specialising in press offences that sentenced journalist Munir Al-Mawari of independent weekly Al-Masdar in his absence to two years in prison for libelling President Ali Abdallah Saleh and also banned him for life from working as a journalist. The newspaper’s editor, Samir Jubran, was sentenced in the same case on...

The newly established Press and Publications Court in Sana’a sentenced Munir Mawari, a Washington-based Yemeni journalist and contributor to the independent weekly Al-Masdar, to two years in prison on charges of defaming the president, journalists told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The court also barred him for life from practicing journalism in Yemen. The court handed...

Chinese police have reportedly arrested two Uighur journalists who published online about Uighur issues in Xinjiang, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Friday. Chinese authorities blamed local and international Uighur websites for fueling July's ethnic violence, according to international news reports. Security officials arrested website manager Hailaite Niyazi in his...

A Casablanca court Friday gave Taoufiq Bouachrine, the publisher of the Akhbar al-Youm newspaper, and cartoonist Khalid Gueddar three-year suspended jail sentences and ordered them to pay a colossal 270,000 euros in damages to Prince Moulay Ismaïl, a cousin of the king, for a cartoon of the prince published last month, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The sentences were issued as a...

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPH) has condemned and called for the immediate release of freelance journalist and blogger Pai Soe Oo, who was detained by government authorities on Wednesday for questioning. Pai Soe Oo was arrested by six officials at his apartment complex in the former capital of Rangoon at around 9 p.m., according to a Mizzima News story that quoted one of...

Colombian journalist Claudia Julieta Duque, who is under an interior ministry protection programme for journalists, is being harassed and intimidated by the intelligence services, who obtained information about her from her alleged protectors, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Duque, of Radio Nizkor, is about to present a file to the authorities exposing the persecution she has...

Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has surveyed access to websites dedicated to the Uighur community, including sites in the Uighur language, in Mandarin and sometimes in English. These sites, operated by Uyghurs for Uyghurs, are for the most part inaccessible both to Internet users based in Xinjiang and those abroad. More than 85 per cent of the surveyed sites were blocked, censored or otherwise...

One journalist was arrested and another assaulted following the re-election of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali as president for the fifth time on October 24, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Taoufik Ben Brik was arrested Thursday when he answered a summons for an alleged assault on a woman in the street last week. Everything points to the being a case trumped up by the authorities to attack...

The exclusive account of Courtney C Radsch, a US journalist who recently lost her job at the Al Arabiya news website ( www.alarabiya.net) in the United Arab Emirates for posting information about safety violations by the national air carrier, Emirates Airlines: “ On Sunday October 4 one of my reporters asked me if we could write about a report on safety concerns at Emirates Airlines following a...