News

Journalists Ahmed Saleyman Dhuhul and Sayid Osman Mire were released on August 9 on paying fines imposed by a court in Hargeisa, in the northwestern breakaway territory of Somaliland, after being held for 28 days. Dhuhul and Mire, who work for Horyaal Radio and are members of the Somaliland Journalists Association (SOLJA), were arrested on July 13. On August 8, the Hargeisa court sentenced them to...

A three-year jail sentence has been passed by a court in the southern city of Taraz passed on Ramazan Esergepov, the owner and editor of the Kazakh weekly Alma Ata Info, on charges of gathering and divulging classified documents under articles 172 and 339 of the Kazakh criminal code, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The trial, which ended on August 8 with Esergepov also being banned...

Zero Hora of Brazil and Express & Echo of the United Kingdom have been named World Young Reader Newspapers of the Year for two vital kinds of excellence in the annual competition organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishing (WAN-IFRA). The awards are part of WAN-IFRA’s annual World Young Reader Prize competition, which honours innovative newspapers that have devised the...

The European Newspaper Publishers Association and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers have called on European governments to help ensure that Lithuania respects freedom of expression and freedom of the press following approval of a law that makes it a crime to ridicule someone. The law would also bar information that promotes homosexual lifestyles, or information that promotes...

The High Media Council in Rwanda has asked the information ministry to close independent weekly Umuseso for three months for likening the current government to the one that was in power in the run-up to the 1994 genocide. The offending article, published in Umuseso’s July 20-27 issue, compared President Paul Kagame’s government to that of Juvénal Habyarimana, who was president immediately prior to...

Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and his wife, Princess Maxima, have sought a court injunction against the Associated Press to force it to stop distributing recent photos of them and their five-year-old daughter, Princess Catharina-Amalia, at an Argentine ski resort. “We fully support the Associated Press’s freedom to cover and photograph any subject it considers newsworthy,” Reporters Sans...

A Moscow military court has decided to press on with the retrial of three alleged accomplices in Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya’s murder, rejecting a petition by the Politkovskaya family for it to be postponed while further investigations were carried out. Presiding judge Nikolai Tkachuk on Friday denied the request although it was supported both defence lawyers and prosecutors. “We are...

Lawyers attacked and manhandled reporters and cameramen on the premises of the Lahore High Court on Thursday after the hearing of a suo motu case pertaining to the thrashing of a policeman and reporters by some lawyers in a sessions court last week. According to the Dawn, a high court bench was hearing the case when a large number of lawyers present in the courtroom started shouting slogans...

A BBC journalist who went undercover to expose failings in care for the elderly has been arrested. Arifa Farooq was detained on Wednesday and held in a police cell in the wake of a Panorama investigation into care providers in South Lanarkshire, a BBC report said. Some details: [ Link] It is believed her arrest is related to an alleged failure to provide accurate personal details to the employer...

Two physical attacks on journalists in the past month and two ongoing trials have again highlighted the aversion that local authorities in Turkey display towards reporters who try to cover local government corruption. “Local officials in Turkey do not hesitate to beat up journalists who criticise them,” Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) said in a statement. “These frequent beatings are unacceptable...