News

Editors of Egyptian newspaeprs Al- Masry Al-Youm and Al-Wafd and three other journalists have been summoned to appear in court in connection with a ban that has been placed on the publication of any material concerning the Susan Tamim murder case, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has reported. On November 22, the prosecution investigated Magdy el-Gallad, the editor of the...

Faten Hamdi, a reporter at Kalima Radio, was arrested by a group of policemen and violently dragged to El Gorjani Police Station after being physically assaulted in front of Tunis's Preparatory Institute for Art and Humanities Studies, the Observatory for the Freedom of Press, Publishing and Creation in Tunisia (OLPEC) has reported. The Kalima reporter was on November 24 covering protests...

The staff of Channel 34 in the Ukranian city of Dniepropetrovsk have launched a hungerstrike protesting the liquidation of the company and the firing of its management. The employees of the Dniepropetrovsk Tele-visual Service (also known as Channel 34) announced the hungerstrike on air November 24, according to weekly PIK Ukrainy. From one day to the next, there has been expectation of an armed...

Fifteen Pakistani journalists returning from a press conference held by Taliban leader Hakeemullah Mehsud in the Orakzai tribal region in the north-west were arrested by the military on November 26, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. They were held for more than five hours at a check-point near Kohat, 60 km south of Peshawar, by security forces who prevented them from continuing their...

Bahman Totonchi, a former contributor to weekly Karfto, has been arrested in Sanandaj, the capital of the northwestern Iranian province of Kurdistan. Another journalist was stabbed and seriously wounded in a neighbouring province after writing about gas shortages in the region, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Totonchi was arrested on November 18 at his Sanandaj home by intelligence...

One of the alleged assailants of Armenian journalist Edik Baghdasarian, gave himself up to the police on November 26. Karen Haroutiunian refused to comment and his motives remain unknown, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières has reported. Very little is known about him or his accomplices in the brutal assault on the chairman of the investigative journalists’ association in Yerevan on the evening...

Stalina Gurevich, lawyer for newspaper editor Mikhail Beketov, who was attacked and brutally beaten on November 13, has announced a reward for information on those who instigated or carried out the attack and condemned lack of progress in the investigation. She joined Andrei Stolbunov, vice-president of the human rights organisation Spravedlivost (Justice) in offering a reward of 500,000 roubles...

Renewed death threats have been made against Drago Held, a journalist with daily Jutamji List, a specialist in the recent history of Croatia, and particularly war crimes during the civil war in ex-Yugoslavia (1991-1995). Drago Held, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) reported, was put under permanent police protection after receiving a voice message on his mobile phone on November 27...

Two independent newspapers that were dropped from official distribution networks for criticising the government have signed contracts that will allow them to appear in the state postal monopoly Belpocha’s newspaper subscription catalogue and to be on sale in the state-owned Belsayuzdruk’s chain of newsstands. The two newspapers are weekly Narodnaya Volya and fortnightly Nasha Niva, Reporters sans...

Seven-year jail sentences have been handed down to Thet Zin and Sein Win Maung, editor and manager respectively of the privately-owned Myanmar Nation, which has since closed down, Reporters sans Frontières and the Burma Media Association (BMA) have reported. The two were sentenced on November 28 by a court in Thingangyun, near Rangoon under the Printers and Publishers Registration Act for being in...