News

(PPF/IFEX) - Two video shops were destroyed and 10 others were damaged when a bomb exploded in a compact disk market in the city of Charsadda, located in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) on 26 June 2007. On 24 June, Mishal Khan, the president of the Muttahida Shopkeepers Association of Charsadda, received a threatening letter from a previously unknown organization, Tanzim Taliban...

MORONI, June 27 (Reuters) - A Comorian reporter arrested while researching possible human rights abuses on a rebellious island said on Wednesday he was beaten by soldiers for hours. Elarif Minihadji was detained on Sunday by forces loyal to the newly inaugurated president of Anjouan, who was elected in polls held in defiance of Comoros' national government. Minihadji, a radio journalist and member...

Fathia Khaled, a presenter on state-owned Eri-TV’s Arabic-language service, was arrested earlier this month and taken to one of the country’s detention centres, Reporters Without Borders has learned from several Eritrean sources. One of the sources said she may have been taken to the Sawa military camp in the northwest after being in touch with one or more persons who had fled across the border...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is alarmed by recent blocks placed upon the media by the Bhutanese government. According to the Association of Press Freedom Activists (APFA), the bhutantimes.com website has been blocked from local viewing by the Information, Communication and Media Authority (BICMA), following orders issued by the government. “We strongly urge the Bhutanese...

On 24 June 2007, the Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Njabulo Mabuza, banned the media from entering the Mbabane Government Hospital, Swaziland's biggest hospital, in search of news. This followed a series of media exposés on the alleged perpetual negligence of hospital staff that resulted in the recent death of a young girl who had been bitten by a rabid dog.The media alleged the child...

The Victorian Government will consider recommending a pardon for two journalists convicted of contempt of court if it receives a petition from them, Premier Steve Bracks said today. Herald Sun reporters Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus had pleaded guilty to contempt of court for refusing to disclose the source of a leaked story about a Federal Government proposal to slash war veterans' benefits...

If Rupert Murdoch succeeds in buying Dow Jones & Co., will the unusual editorial-independence provision in the deal — which would apparently limit his involvement in The Wall Street Journal newsroom — really work? And should it? Veteran editors and newspaper executives who spoke with E&P today offered mostly criticism of the arrangement, from both the newsroom and ownership sides, saying the...

Farida Nekzad began receiving menacing calls on her mobile phone a half hour after arriving at the funeral of a fellow female journalist assassinated by gunmen. “Daughter of America! We will kill you, just like we killed her,”’ she quoted the man on the phone as saying even as Nekzad was mourning Zakia Zaki, the owner of a radio station north of Kabul. Zaki’s maimed body lay nearby, part of her...

(SEAPA/IFEX) - Police in the Sibu district in Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, have introduced restrictions on media coverage of crime stories, threatening journalists with arrest should they breach the new rules. Journalists were told that police permission must be obtained before a crime story could be written or published. In addition, the police were to be the sole source of...

(BIANET/IFEX) - A case in the district town of Gerger, in the province of Adiyaman, southeast of Turkey, illustrates how the Turkish government has been indecisive and contradictory in dealing with freedom of expression. Public Prosecutor Sadullah Ovacikli dismissed a case against journalist Haci Bogatekin, who wrote an article about a flea epidemic, in which he criticised the government. The...