News

Authorities in Uzbekistan have barred Abdumalik Boboyev, a stringer for the US government-funded broadcaster Voice of America, from traveling to Germany by denying him the exit visa required for travel outside Uzbekistan, according to the independent news website Uznews and the Uzbek service of the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Boboyev filed his application to travel on...

Ignacio Gómez, the co-producer of the "Noticias Uno" news programme on state-owned TV station Canal Uno, believes that Colombia’s leading intelligence agency, the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), was responsible for the May 24 break-in at his Bogotá apartment, the seventh in the past decade. The break-in, which took place while Gómez was out, was executed by two men and a woman with...

At the request of journalists’ organisations, press photographers and reporters are due to demonstrate outside the Danish embassy in Buenos Aires May 24 in protest against a brutal attack by two members of the embassy’s security staff four days ago on Julian Herr, an 18-year-old photographer employed by the magazine El Guardián. “We urge the Danish ambassador, Henrik Bramsen Hahn, to publicly...

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has joined colleagues in India in condemning the arrest of Tarakant Dwivedi, who writes under the pen name Akela, under India's Official Secrets Act. According to local media reports, Dwivedi was arrested Tuesday by the Government Railway Police and charged with criminal trespass. He will be held in police custody until...

The Libyan government should immediately release the body of South African photographer Anton Hammerl, and investigate the role of the armed forces in his death, Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Hammerl, 41, was shot and killed by government forces near Brega in eastern Libya on April 5. Three journalists traveling with him were detained by Libyan authorities...

A court in Makhachkala, the capital of the southern republic of Dagestan, has ended a three-year legal battle by acquitting the weekly Chernovik on charges of extremism, inciting hatred and defaming the security forces, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The charges were brought against editor Nadira Isayeva and four of her journalists – Biakay Magomedov...

Local TV presenter Yensi Roberto Ordoñez Galdámez was found murdered May 19 in Nueva Concepción, in the southern department of Escuintla, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The motive is not yet known but he had reportedly been threatened and harassed in connection with his work as journalist. Relatives said unidentified individuals recently extorted 25...

There has been a new wave of threats and physical attacks on journalists during the past few weeks in both Bishkek, the capital, and the southern city of Osh, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “Harassment and self-censorship are growing, in an explosive atmosphere of ethnic tension,” RSF said. “No serious investigation has been carried out into any of...

Local newspaper columnist and politician Wilfred Ojeda Peralta was found murdered in La Victoria, in the northern state of Aragua, on May 17 after disappearing the day before. Local press reports quoted relatives as saying they were not aware of his having any enemies. So far there are no clues as to the motive but the method suggests that it was a contract killing carried out at the behest of...

A regional prosecutor in Uralsk, western Kazakhstan, has refused to investigate a threatening call against Alla Zlobina, a regional correspondent for the embattled independent weekly Golos Respubliki. Zlobina's daughter was also intimidated. New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called upon regional authorities to thoroughly probe the incidents and bring those...