News

Iranian judicial authorities are continuing to hold journalists employed by foreign news media including, Maziar Bahari, the correspondent of the US news magazine Newsweek, arrested exactly three months ago, and Fariba Pajooh, a stringer for Radio France Internationale and other media, who Tuesday began her second month in detention. Bahari has dual Canadian and Iranian citizenship. “The recent...

Four journalists were among more than 7,000 prisoners being released under an amnesty announced by Burma’s junta on Thursday last. “I am happy to be free and I am going to continue working as a journalist,” Eint Khaing Oo said as she was freed from Insein prison, near Rangoon under an amnesty announced by the military government. Three other journalists, Kyaw Kyaw Thant and Monywa Aung Shin, were...

Peru's Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) has maintained its arbitrary ban on Radio La Voz de Bagua, a station based in the country's northern Amazonas region, refusing on September 15 to allow it to resume broadcasting. The station has been stripped of its licence since June 6. Radio La Voz de Bagua was accused of inciting violence in June during an outbreak of protests and rioting by...

The assistant news editor of Nigerian daily Guardian, Bayo Ohu, was shot dead at home by a group of up to five gunmen on Sunday morning as he was preparing to go to a church service. The killers fired at least eight bullets into him, after he opened the door to them, the International Press Institute (IPI) has reported quoting news reports.. The journalist’s wife had already left the house to...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has welcomed a Supreme Court ruling in the Philippines granting a change of trial venue in the case against two suspects charged with ordering the March 2005 murder of investigative reporter Marlene Garcia-Esperat. The Supreme Court handed down the ruling on August 26 and Manila-based press freedom group Centre for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR)...

Georgian authorities have pressed criminal charges against the Tbilisi bureau chief for the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. According to RIA Novosti, Besik Pipia is facing up to three years in prison if convicted on a criminal charge of document forgery. Georgian police opened a criminal probe against Pipia on September 3, claiming he had forged his Georgian driver’s licence, which they issued to...

Press freedom groups have condemned the seizure of the print run of one of the few remaining independent newspapers in Kazakhstan, which is set to take control of a leading security and human rights organization. The country will become chair of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe in 2010. On Friday last, court officers in the financial capital Almaty confiscated the entire...

Contravía, a TV current affairs programme that was forced off the air by threats eight months ago, resumed broadcasting on the Canal Uno public TV channel Thursday. Produced by freelance journalist Hollman Morris, Contravía has long occupied an important place in the Colombian media, above all because of its coverage of the country’s nearly half-century-old civil war. Reporters Sans Frontières...

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo must aggressively investigate threats made against three radio reporters in the eastern city of Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Delphie Namuto and Caddy Adzuba of UN-sponsored broadcasting network Radio Okapi and Jolly Kamuntu of local station Radio Maendeleo were named in an anonymous...

The government-run Uganda Broadcasting Council effectively shut down four radio stations today and Thursday, and ordered all radio stations to halt political debate programming in the wake of violent clashes in the capital, Kampala, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Violence erupted after the government attempted to block the king of the Buganda ethnic group, Ronald Muwenda...