Asia

A Vietnamese reporter, Huy Duc, has been dismissed by the governmental daily Sai Gon Tiep Thi for posting criticism of the Cold War-era Soviet Union on his personal blog, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). One of the newspaper’s editors, Tran Cong Khanh, said Huy Duc was fired on August because of what he had posted online. Huy Duc confirmed in his blog that he had been dismissed and...

The Vietnam government has launched a crackdown against online journalists and political bloggers for criticising the ruling Communist Party’s policies towards China. The move comes as Web-based journalists and bloggers' independent reporting challenges the tightly censored state-run media's traditional monopoly on local news and opinion, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. On...

Tamil journalist JS Tissainayagam has been sentenced to 20 years hard labour on charges of supporting terrorism and inciting racial hatred, becoming the first journalist to be convicted under Sri Lanka's draconian anti-terrorism law. An English-language columnist for the Sri Lankan Sunday Times and editor of the news website OutreachSL, Tissainayagam was arrested on March 7, 2008. He spent five...

An Urdu-languge daily Asaap has closed down after it came under “tremendous pressure” from the Pakistan government and the security forces which were controlling its offices both inside and out. Editor, Abid Mir, speaking on the telephone from Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan told Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) that he had “published the last edition on August 18” as a result of the...

Gunmen shot dead an Afghan television journalist and severely wounded his colleague Monday in northwestern Pakistan. Janullah Hashim Zada was gunned down as he travelled on a public minibus from Torkham on the Afghan border to the main northwestern city of Peshawar, a Khyber Agency official told the Associated Press. Zada's colleague, Ali Khan, was seriously hurt with a gunshot wound to the neck...

The Afghanistan government has imposed a media blackout on election-related violence during Thursday's presidential polls. Afghanistan's National Security Council released a statement through the Foreign Ministry Tuesday and official spokesmen contacted news bureaus by telephone to discourage reporting on violent incidents from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, according to local and international...

The violence that threatens journalists working for Afghanistan’s news media has created a climate that does not favour free and impartial coverage of the August 20 crucial presidential election, now just a day away. Media coverage is also affected by the fact that political obstruction has prevented the adoption of a new press law, a situation that Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has

More serious charges have been brought against three bloggers and activists who have been held since June 26 in the southwestern China province of Fujian for reporting that a young woman died after being gangraped in February 2008 and that some of the rape participants had links with local officials, according to Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF). The three detainees – Fan Yanqiong, Wu Huaying and...

Miscreants shot dead TV journalist Siddique Bacha Khan in the city of Mardan in Pakistan's restive North West Frontier Province on Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Unidentified gunmen ambushed Bacha Khan, news correspondent for the independent Aaj TV channel, and shot him at close range before fleeing the scene, the channel reported on its website. The journalist...

Tuesday's roadside bomb attack that seriously wounded two Associated Press journalists highlights the dangers journalists face in covering the escalating conflict in Afghanistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. AP's report of the attack said Spanish photographer Emilio Morenatti and AP Television News Indonesian videographer Andi Jatmiko were injured while embedded with the US...