News

A TV crew from the Moscow-based independent broadcaster REN-TV was recently attacked and threatened in the North Caucasian republic of Ingushetia that caused them to flee the region, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. REN-TV journalist Leonid Kanfer and cameraman Victor Muzalevsky were threatened and their driver was beaten on Wednesday, the Moscow-based...

The editor-in-chief of Zambia’s largest newspaper was criminally charged for the second time on Wednesday after running an op-ed critical of controversial pornography charges against a journalist, according to local journalists and news reports. Magistrate David Simusamba charged Fred M’membe, a 1995 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, and the daily Post with contempt of court...

Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has hailed Thursday's release of Rodrigo Angue Nguema, the Malabo correspondent of Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Radio France Internationale (RFI), although a court is insisting that the two French news organisations pay 40 million CFA francs (61,000 euros) in connection with a defamation action that was brought against him. “We welcome his release with a great...

Laxman Choudhury, a newspaper reporter based Gajapati (in the state of Orissa) who has written about alleged local police links with organised crime, has been detained for more than three weeks on a sedition charge in state capital Bhubaneswar on the grounds that he was sent Maoist leaflets in the mail. “Choudhury’s arbitrary and unjustifiable arrest by the Gajapati police violated the Indian...

A Russian court has dismissed a libel action brought against the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta by the grandson of Josef Stalin, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Yevgeny Dzhugashvili had claimed that an article carried in a supplement of the newspaper on 22 April 2009 describing Stalin as a bloody dictator personally responsible for the execution of Soviet citizens and thousands...

Innocent Ebodé, editor of the privately-owned weekly La Voix published in the capital N’Djamena was expelled from Chad Thursday after the authorities accused the Cameroon national of “staying illegally” in the country, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Ebodé was Thursday taken by Chadian officials to the Cameroon side of the border city of Kousseri, after being summoned in the morning...

Two libel suits have been brought in rapid succession against the Moscow-based independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta by Joseph Stalin’s grandson, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Dzhugashvili is demanding 10 million roubles (229,000 euros) in damages from Novaya Gazeta and journalist Anatoly Yablokov for an article published on...

Essential issues were again left unaddressed at the 11th hearing on October 12 in the trial of the newspaper editor Hrant Dink’s alleged killers before an Istanbul court. A Turkish journalist of Armenian origin, Dink was gunned down outside his newspaper in Istanbul on January 19, 2007. “In hearing after hearing, the same fundamental questions remain, including the existence of a political will at...

Prominent radio journalist Herbin Hoyos Medina left Colombia on Monday after authorities uncovered a supposed plot to kill him, according to local news reports. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern about the threats against Hoyos and urges authorities to continue to provide protection and ensure that the journalist can return to Colombia and work without...

An enquiry into the October 4 assault on journalist Zohra al-Musawi was opened Wednesday by Iraq’s High Council of Judges in response to a request by a group of journalists to the council’s president, Judge Medhat al-Mahmoud, who has a reputation for conducting thorough and detailed investigations, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “A judicial enquiry is the logical, essential and...