ARCHIVES: State Impunity
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has welcomed movement in the case of the murder of Geo TV reporter Wali Khan Babar in Karachi, and called for a full prosecution to break a longstanding pattern of impunity in journalist murders in Pakistan. Police arrested five men they say carried out the killing in January. Police apprehended the men in a stolen vehicle in the town of Gulshan-e-Iqbal, according to local news reports. Senior police officer Saud Mirza told a press conference the... MORE
Press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on law enforcement in Honduras to stop attacking or prohibiting journalists from covering social unrest in the country. The attacks have come amid a national teachers' strike that has turned violent. Teachers, farmers, and anti-government activists demanding education reforms, and an increase in wages in the capital, Tegucigalpa, have clashed with police, the Associated Press said. The confrontations, which left at least one... MORE
Taha Al-Alawi , the head of satellite television station Al-Masar TV, was killed in the Werij district of southern Baghdad on Friday. Gunmen shot at the car in which he was travelling. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) urged Iraqi authorities to carry out a proper investigation into this killing in order to find those responsible and bring them to justice. Impunity for murderers of journalists must stop. Al-Alawi is the fifth journalist to have been killed in Iraq... MORE
Peasant, trade union and indigenous groups and affiliated news media are designated as “permanent military targets” in three leaflets apparently issued by paramilitary groups – the Black Eagles, “Rastrojos” and United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) – that have been circulating in the southwestern city of Popayán and the surrounding Cauca region since late February. The latest leaflet, dated late March and signed by the AUC’s central column, names 11 journalists. The targets also include... MORE
Journalists in Somalia are getting caught in the crossfire of increased fighting between joint government and African Union forces against Al-Shabaab insurgents. Radio Simba sports reporter Ahmed Hassan was hit in a crossfire while covering a soccer game in Mogadishu on Wednesday, according to local journalists. Hassan was rushed to Medina Hospital, where doctors performed surgery on his stomach. He was also hit in the shoulder. Although recovering from the wounds, Hassan is currently slipping... MORE
(C-Libre/IFEX): Journalists Richard Cásula and Salvador Sandoval , of the Canal 36-Cholusat Sur television station, were injured while they were covering a story at the Honduras Media Education College (Colegio de Profesionales de Educación Media de Honduras, COPEMH). The police were attempting to evict teachers who were staging a protest at the COPEMH premises. Sandoval, a photojournalist, received injuries to his face when he struck by a teargas canister, while Cásula inhaled the teargas,... MORE
The Argentine government should ensure that the nation's two largest dailies can be distributed without interference, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. CPJ's appeal comes two days after union demonstrators blocked trucking exits at the printing facilities of Clarín and La Nación , preventing Clarín from distributing its Sunday edition. Clarín and La Nació n reported on their websites that their adjacent printing facilities in Buenos Aires were blocked early Sunday by dozens... MORE
Reuters television producer Ayat Basma and cameraman Ezzat Baltaji were released on March 28 after being held for two days but Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has meanwhile learnt that two other journalists were arrested on March 27. The London-based Syrian Human Rights Monitoring Centre identified them as Doha Hassan , who works for Orient TV and several websites, and Zaher Omareen . RSF has been told they are being held at the General Directorate for State... MORE
Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reiterated its support for LankaeNews, a Colombo-based online newspaper that has made a major contribution to media pluralism and independently reported news and information in Sri Lanka, and for its journalists, who are unable to work normally because of the many threats and attacks against them. Their safety is no longer assured as a result of all the harassment and intimidation that is detailed in a report that three media... MORE
Two Kurdish opposition journalists have escaped murder attempts in the past three days in Erbil and Dohuk, places controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, while other journalists have been briefly detained or have been the target of a kidnap attempt. Many report that they are continuing to receive death threats by SMS, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Hangaw Hashm , a reporter for Rojname , a weekly that supports the opposition party Gorran, was... MORE
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