News

On March 31, in the commercial city of Abidjan, Judge Aissata Koné convicted Op-Ed Editor Nanankoua Gnamenteh and Managing Editor Eddy Péhé of private weekly Le Repère of charges of "offending the head of state" over an article in early March that was critical of President Laurent Gbagbo, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local media reports. Koné sentenced Gnamanteh...

Detained Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi has been with espionage by the Iranian government. Hassan Haddad, deputy public prosecutor, told the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) that Saberi "without press credentials and under the name of being a reporter, was carrying out espionage activities." In its report, published Wednesday, ISNA quoted the prosecutor as saying that "she has been...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Moldovan authorities to allow Romanian journalists to enter Moldova and report on anti-communist rallies that have swept Moldova's capital, Chisinau, since Monday. Approximately 10,000 protesters took to the streets on Tuesday to protest Sunday's parliamentary election, which was won by President Vladimir Voronin's Communist Party. Nineteen...

A district court in Baku has sentenced Asif Marzili, editor-in-chief of the independent weekly Tezadlar, to one year in prison on charges of defaming managers and professors of Azerbaijan International University, the Azeri Press Agency reported. Ruling on Tuesday, the court also handed down a six-month suspended corrective labor sentence to Tezadlar freelancer Zumrud Mammedova in the same case...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Guatemalan authorities to conduct an immediate and thorough investigation into the shooting of a two-man TV crew in Guatemala City on Wednesday. Unidentified gunmen killed veteran reporter Rolando Santiz and injured cameraman Antonio de León. At around 5:10 p.m., Santiz and de León, a news crew for the national television station Telecentro...

Police in the Moscow suburb of Khimki must conduct a thorough investigation into the sudden death of newspaper designer Sergei Protazanov, the circumstances of which are in dispute, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Anatoly Yurov, chief editor of the pro-opposition Grazhdanskoye Soglasiye, told CPJ that he spoke with his employee by telephone on Monday. Protazanov, 40, said an...

Police in the western city of Kaliningrad should drop trumped-up bribery charges against Arseny Makhlov, the founder of the independent weekly Dvornik, and allow him to work without fear of harassment, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Makhlov was arrested and charged on Monday after Dvornik published articles on corruption in the building industry that implicated local...

Gunmen shot and killed Honduran radio journalist Rafael Munguía Ortiz Tuesday night in the northern city of San Pedro Sula, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local news reports. Honduran authorities must conduct an immediate and thorough investigation into Munguía's killing and bring those responsible to justice, CPJ said today. At 6 p.m. on Tuesday, unidentified...

AT FIRST glance, the resolution on “religious defamation” adopted by the UN’s Human Rights Council on March 26th, mainly at the behest of Islamic countries, reads like another piece of harmless verbiage churned out by a toothless international bureaucracy. What is wrong with saying, as the resolution does, that some Muslims faced prejudice in the aftermath of September 2001? But a closer look at...

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations top human rights body condemned "defamation" of religion on Friday and, in an apparent reference to the storm over the Prophet cartoons, said press freedom had its limits. With the support of China, Russia and Cuba, Moslem and Arab states comfortably won a vote on the 47-state Human Rights Council to express concern at "negative stereotyping" of religions and...