News

the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply troubled by the death of award-winning photojournalist Trent Keegan, whose body was found on Wednesday in a ditch in Nairobi, Kenya. Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Keegan was found with head injuries in a drainage trench along a central highway. Police have opened an inquest. "This is a devastating loss for...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the Ugandan government to "clearly and publicly" respond to local media reports claiming it has set up a high-level government task force to investigate journalists and control the media. "We call on the government to respond clearly and publicly to these allegations," said Gabriel Baglo, the Director of the IFJ Africa Office. "The...

The Belarusian foreign ministry’s has refused to issue accreditation to reporter Alyaksey Minchonak of Radio Racyja, a station based in the Polish city of Bialystok that broadcasts to Belarus. This latest obstacle for the station comes a month after the police raided its Minsk bureau and seized equipment, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “The authorities are continuing to harass Radio...

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has called on the government of Venezuela to allow for the restoration of on-air broadcasting by Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV). The channel's transmission equipment was seized after its shutdown on May 27 last year and this action would be "one way of beginning to re-establish freedom of the press in the country," the organisation declared in a...

A journalist was beaten up and subjected to electrical shocks by officials of the Carabobo State Police in Venezuela after he was accused of damaging some furniture in the reception area of El Periódico newspaper and carrying a gun without a permit, according to the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS). On May 5, Fabián Chacón, legal representative of journalist Leocenis García, stated that his...

The police in Esigodini in the province of Matabeleland in southern Zimbabwe have arrested three media workers reportedly employed by Sky News, a UK-based cable and satellite channel, which is among the foreign news organisations banned from reporting in Zimbabwe. The journalists were arrested on May 23. They were still in police custody five days later following an application on May 28 for...

Eddy Abasiko Mango, a journalist with the Kisangani-based station of state-owned Radio Télévision Nationale Congolaise (RTNC), was suspended on May 23 for three months by Bwande Bwanapuwa, the station's provincial manager, for hosting a programme where guests criticised the provincial governor, Journaliste en danger (JED) has reported. In his May 21 political programme called "Loba Toyoka" (Speak...

After being held for 19 days on questionable drug-trafficking charges in Puentecilla prison in the central state of Guanajuato, El Tiempo publisher Jesús Lemus Barajas was transferred Tuesday to a high-security federal prison in Puente Grande, in the neighbouring state of Jalisco, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The authorities said he had to be moved because he was a “dangerous...

Journalists and the news media have consistently been harassed in the past two months by the Moldovan authorities. The biweekly Moldavskie Vedomosti is threatened with closure by an investigation into alleged corruption while the body that allocates broadcast frequencies has been accused of favouring pro-government radio and TV stations. “With just one year to go to parliamentary elections, it is...

A constitutional court Tuesday approved a petition by Manana Aslamazian, the former director of Internews Russia, ruling that article 188.1 of the criminal code, limiting the amount of currency that can be brought into the country, is unconstitutional. Internews Russia was closed in April 2007 after Aslamazian was charged with contraband under the article. “We welcome the constitutional court’s...