News

A newspaper editor was assaulted and another was threatened by Maoist activists annoyed by critical coverage, in separate incidents in Kailali, in far western Nepal, according to the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ). In the first incident, Hemanta Paudel, editor of the Kailali-based newspaper Sudur Sandesh Daily, was threatened by the Maoist party-affiliated Young Communist League (YCL) on...

Rehmat Shah Afridi, the editor of Pakistani dailies Frontier Post and Maidan, has been released after nine years in prison on trumped-up drugs charges. He was freed on parole on May 24 on the orders of Punjab’s interior ministry. "Afridi’s release is excellent news for his family and friends and is a first step towards redressing a case that lacked transparency and led to his being given two death...

A Tehran revolutionary court's decision to hold Kurdish journalist Mohammad Sadegh Kabovand's trial behind closed doors under article 188 of the criminal code has been condemned by his lawyer, Masomeh Sotoudeh. The trial began on 25 May 2008. "This article can only be used for trials in which the details discussed could offend public morality, such as the trials of rapists," Sotoudeh said. She...

Yet another Senegalese journalist has been sentenced on criminal defamation charges within a week. This journalist, according to Afrol News, was found guilty of "publishing false news." Papa Moussa Guèye, director of the private daily L'Exclusif, was handed a six-month suspended prison term by a court in the capital Dakar. His troubles began after his paper published an article on President...

The Editors Guild of India on Tuesday condemned the attack on the offices of Telugu daily Andhra Jyoti by the activists of an organisation representing the backward Madiga community, terming it as an assault on "freedom of press". "This is an attack on the freedom of the press and there is use of intimidatory and inflammatory methods to silence the voice of the editors and journalists of Andhra...

Salimzhan Gaisin, deputy editor-in-chief of the newspaper Saratovsky Reporter, has been found guilty of a crime under Article 129 of the Russian Criminal Code (for "Slander in the Mass Media"), according to the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES). In summer 2007, a group of residents in the village of Bulgakovka, located in the Voskresensk district of Saratov region, complained to...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the continuing use of violence against the independent press after 60,000 copies of the Zimbabwean On Sunday newspaper were intercepted and torched on the evening of May 24 and a freelance reporter was attacked and beaten in the eastern city of Mutare. “These attacks must not remain unpunished,” Paris-based RSF said. “Since the March 29 general...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reiterated a call to Senegalese authorities to end a pattern of criminal defamation prosecutions against the press after a court in the capital, Dakar, sentenced a journalist on Tuesday to a suspended prison term on a charge of "publishing false news," according to news reports and his lawyer. Papa Moussa Guèye, director of the private daily L...

In a fresh row of violence unidentified assailants Thursday killed Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, a senior TV journalist while he was returning to his home town after interviewing Moulvi Omar, Spokesman of Pakistan Taliban Movement in Pakistan Bajaur Tribal Agency. Muhammad Ibrahim was working for Express TV and Daily Express in Bajaur Agency for the last six years and was a renowned journalist of the...

Two Iraqi journalists were killed in separate incidents this week. Wisam Ali Ouda, a cameraman for the Afaq television station, was shot as he walked home in the Obaidi district of Baghdad on Wednesday morning, Reuters reported. The station's public relations head, Bushra Abdul-Amir, told Reuters that witnesses said Ouda was shot by an "American sniper." Station secretary Ghufran al-Bakri told the...