News

Unidentified gunmen, ambush attacks, serial abductions and human right violations go hand in hand in a conflict ridden society. This is true of Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Pakistan or any other country in the world which is going through a same scenario. The strategies of dealing with such conflicts have ranged from political suppression at one end of the spectrum to political accommodation at the...

(IPI/IFEX) - Vienna, 14 December 2006: The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists in over 120 countries, is deeply concerned by the ongoing intimidation and censorship of the Fijian press since the military coup d'état of 5 December 2006. In the most alarming development, Fiji's Daily Post Editor-in-Chief, Robert Wolfgramm, is...

(CMFR/IFEX) - Five journalists posted bail at the Regional Trial Court of the Manila City Hall on 14 December 2006 following the approval of the filing in court of libel charges against them by Jose Miguel Arroyo, the husband of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The journalists were sued in connection with an article that appeared in "Newsbreak" magazine on 3 December 2003. Editor-in-Chief...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is concerned by reports that a new press regulatory body that may be established in Pakistan is a replication of an infamous "black law" dating back to the 1960s. According to IFJ affiliate, the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), a report appeared in a leading Urdu language daily newspaper stating the government was about to...

(SEAPA/IFEX) - The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) welcomes the Indonesian Constitutional Court's landmark ruling on 6 December 2006, which declared as unconstitutional the "lèse majesté" articles that criminalise insulting the president and vice-president. Under the now annulled articles 134, 136, and 137 of the Criminal Code, anyone who disseminated, demonstrated openly or put up a...

A photojournalist was roughed up by a Delhi Police official Thursday and his camera smashed while he was taking pictures of the general strike called by Airports Authority of India (AAI) staff. B.B. Chaudhary, assistant commissioner of police posted at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, manhandled Kamal Singh of the Press Trust of India (PTI). He snatched Singh's camera and smashed it on the...

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has voiced deep concern about an increase in the past two weeks in attacks on the press that are linked to Bolivia's growing political crisis. State and privately-owned media are becoming targets in tit-for-tat violence between government supporters and opponents. "Journalists from the state media and those that support President Evo Morales are clearly in danger in the eastern...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has firmly condemned the forcible closure of privately-owned Radio Warsan in the western city of Baidoa. Police working for the federal transition government, which has its headquarters in Baidoa, have been occupying the radio station since the afternoon of 14 December 2006. "You cannot claim to represent the democratic camp and at the same time behave like...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has called for a thorough and impartial investigation into a traffic accident in which Sok Serei, one of the Cambodia correspondents of Radio Free Asia's Khmer-language service, was knocked off his motorcycle and seriously injured. "As there are witnesses who say a vehicle deliberately struck Sok Serei's motorcycle, it would seem the authorities should...

A Sana’a primary court convicted Wednesday two local journalists of insulting the Islamic religion and ridiculing prophet Mohammed (PBUH) by republishing some of the Danish cartoons back in February. Judge Mohammed Rubaid of the South East Sana’a delivered guilty verdicts against Akram Sabra, managing editor of Al-Hurriyah weekly and his assistant Yehya al-Abed. The two journalists received...