News

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, October 10, 2007 - An Al-Jazeera cameraman held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay for five years without charge is in deteriorating health as a result of a hunger strike, his lawyer told the Committee to Protect Journalists. The lawyer also revealed that the U.S. military, in a recent hearing, cited cameraman Sami al-Haj's professional training for the Qatar-based...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, October 10, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the continued detention of at least three Burmese journalists and expresses strong concern about recent news reports that government authorities have consulted media images to identify and detain people who participated in recent street protests. According to CPJ sources, Win Ko Ko Lat of Rangoon-based journal...

(Mizzima/IFEX) - Internet access in Burma has been re-established for day use since 9 October 2007, after more than two weeks of interruption, but users in Rangoon said the connection faltered after a few hours. A Rangoon-based journalist says the frequent failure of Internet connections could be the junta's way to continue controlling the flow of information out of the country. According to an...

Reporters Without Borders today expressed deep concern about the disappearance of Riaz Mengal, of the newspaper Intikhab based in Khuzdar, Balochistan province in south-western Pakistan. His family and colleagues have said they suspect a minister is implicated in his abduction. Just before his disappearance, Mengal had written articles about mafia trafficking of stolen cars. "Riaz had received...

Reporters Without Borders today called for the immediate release of Ibrahim Manzo Diallo, managing editor of privately-owned bi-monthly Aïr Info, published in Agadez, northern Niger, who was arrested yesterday at Niamey airport as he prepared to board a plane for France. Niger border police seized Manzo Diallo as he was going through the departure area for a late night Air France flight to Paris...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the harassment of two Amnesty International researchers and a Gambian journalist, who were arrested and detained for three days before being released on bail, pending possible legal proceedings. The worldwide press freedom organisation joined Amnesty International in urging the Gambian authorities to immediately and unconditionally clear all three of any...

Mumbai: Some 13 years after it was founded, the Media Research Users Council (MRUC), a non-profit body that conducts and validates media research, may finally be headed for a rapprochement with the Indian Newspaper Society (INS), the representative body of print media in the country. If so, it could have significant impact on the relevance and importance of the two rival readership surveys...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Time magazine said Wednesday it would ask Indonesia's top court to review a ruling that ordered the magazine to pay $106 million, saying it defamed former Indonesian dictator Suharto. Time had run a cover story in its Asian edition in May 1999 saying that the family of Suharto had amassed billions of dollars during his 32-year rule. Time had won two earlier court challenges to the...

(CMFR/IFEX) - A committee of the Philippine Senate has summoned a national daily reporter in connection with her investigation into a leak in the proceedings of an executive session held on 26 September 2007. The Senate ethics committee wants Juliet Labog Javellana of the Manila broadsheet "Philippine Daily Inquirer" to reveal her sources for a story she wrote on what transpired during the...

(FMM/IFEX) - Free Media Movement is appalled by the gross violation of journalists' rights by the military in their expulsion of three journalists from Jaffna. The journalists had even obtained MOD (Ministry of Defence) clearance to make a documentary. The Quick Silver Media crew, which was traveling in Sri Lanka to produce a documentary for Channel 4 television in the UK, was denied its right to...