News

Three rights organisations - ANHRI, the Arab Council for the Support of a Fair Trial and the Hisham Mubarak Law Center - submitted a petition to a deputy demanding an investigation into the brutal assault of journalist Kamal Murad of "Al-Fajr" newspaper by three police officers on June 17. The police officers, who are from Rahmanya Centre in Buhaira Governate in the Delta region, badly beat Murad...

Rafael Velasco Salas, deputy director of the bimonthly publication Zona Norte and correspondent in Chiapas for the Oaxaca-based newspaper Noticias, Voz e Imagen, was assaulted and threatened with murder by Humberto Cernuda Hernández, brother of Josefa Cernuda - the president of the Family Services Unit (Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, DIF) of the city of Pichucalco in the state of Chiapas...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Tuesday welcomed a renewed call by European parliamentarians for Ukraine to bring to justice "those who instigated and organised the murder of Heorhiy Gongadze." The call was made by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg who today expressed "deep concern" that Ukraine...

The Indian newspaper society (INS) and Editors Guild of India on Wednesday condemned the attack on three journalists and the office of Malayala Manorama in Kerala allegedly by SFI activists and asked the state government to take strong action against the guilty, says a Press Trust of India (PTI) report. In a statement, INS president Bahubali S Shah said the three journalists and a driver were...

The Moroccan government should allow the news media to report on human rights abuses committed during the reign of King Hassan II, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said after a court ordered an independent newspaper to stop publishing victim testimony given to a royal truth and reconciliation commission. Ali Anouzla, editor of Al-Jarida al-Oula, a newly established daily, was ordered to...

The (Baltimore) Sun will cut about 100 jobs, including 55-60 in the newsroom, through buyouts, layoffs and the closing of open positions, says an Associated Press (AP) report. The latest in a series of cuts to the venerable newspaper were announced Wednesday in a memo from publisher Tim Ryan to the newspaper staff. "These actions are necessary for us to remain competitive and win in the future...

Burmese authorities on Sunday deported South Korean freelance journalist Lee Yu Kyong and confiscated four compact discs containing photos she had taken of damage caused by Cyclone Nargis. Lee was met in the early morning of June 22 by five police officials at her guesthouse in Rangoon and told she must leave the country that same day because she had entered on a tourist rather than journalist...

An 11-year prison sentence has been imposed on Kurdish journalist Mohammad Sadegh Kabovand for "activity against national security." The former editor of Payam-e Mardom-e Kurdestan, a weekly closed down in 2005, Kabovand received his 11-year sentence on June 22 from a Tehran revolutionary court for creating a human rights organisation in Iran's Kurdish region. Since his arrest in July 2007, he has...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has welcomed the "transparency" of a US Defence Department report released on June 16 confirming that US soldiers were responsible for the fatal shooting of Reuters soundman Waleed Khaled in Baghdad on August 28, 2005. Khaled drove with Reuters cameraman Haider Kadhem to the Baghdad district of Al-Adil to cover a situation in which an Iraqi police unit had been...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the arrest of journalist Ahmed Al-Majoun in a raid by US and Iraqi soldiers on his home in Tikrit (180 km north of Baghdad) early on June 24. His son was also arrested. Majoun heads a journalists union based in Salah El Din, the province of which Tikrit is the capital. No reason has been given for their arrests. "We are disturbed to see that, just a...