Malaysian blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin, editor and founder of the Malaysia Today news and commentary website, has been released. High Court Justice Syed Ahmad Helmy Syed Ahmad ruled on November 7 that Raja Petra's detention under the Internal Security Act (ISA) was illegal and that the Home Minister had acted beyond his authority when he sentenced the blogger to two years in prison, the Committee...
Pakistani security forces allegedly killed Qari Muhammad Shoib, a Mingora-based print journalist on Saturday night when he was driving in his car at Nishat Chowk of Mingora city in the restive Swat Valley of North West Pakistan. Qari Shoib, 32, was a dynamic journalist who regularly reported on the conflict between Taliban militants and Pakistan security forces for daily Azadi and PPA news Agency...
Afghan abductors kept a Canadian journalist captive, sometimes blindfolded and chained, in a cave for four weeks before she was freed, the reporter said Sunday. Mellissa Fung, a journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp in Afghanistan, was freed on Saturday after being abducted a month ago near capital Kabul. Fung was the second abducted foreign journalist to be released in two days. On...
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned Sri Lankan government pressure that led to the debate programme “Ira Anduru Pata” being cut short as it was being broadcast live on the evening of November 4 on state TV station Rupavahini. It ended a discussion of a new broadcasting law by three guests, including Free Media Movement convenor Uvindu Kurukulasuriya. The presenter announced a break for...
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has hailed the arrests of suspects in the fatal shootings of two provincial correspondents of the Bangkok-based daily Matichon—Jaruek Rangcharoen on September 27 in the central province of Suphan Buri and Ahiwat Chainurat on August 1 in the southern city of Nakhon Si Thammarat. “The arrests of two suspects in each of these murders suggest that the police are making...
A Dutch journalist abducted by suspected Taliban rebels in Afghanistan a week ago was freed Friday and is in good health, her employer said. Joanie de Rijke, 43, was captured on Saturday last week while she was en route to do a story about a group of Taliban who had killed 10 French soldiers in August, an editor at the Belgian P-magazine told agence France-Presse (AFP). Michael Lescroart...
The press freedom situation in Sri Lanka has noticeably deteriorated over the past year, marked by a continuation in murders, attacks, abductions, intimidation and harassment of the media, says an international press freedom mission to Sri Lanka. Media in war-affected areas in the north and east continue to be the most insecure, facing threats and restrictions from all parties, says the mission...
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and the Burma Media Association have obtained a copy of a directive (attached file) which the military government’s censorship office recently sent to the Burmese media spelling out 10 rules for editors and the sanctions they will incur for not respecting them. "The directive is a paragon of news control inasmuch as editors are threatened with punishments ranging up...
Bhutan has just got its first English daily newspaper, which promises to provide a new perspective to news and events for the citizens in the landlocked Himalayan country, says a Press Trust of India report [ Link]. Bhutan Today, the first English daily launched in the country, is the third private newspaper after Bhutan Times and Bhutan Observer, which are weekly and bi-weekly respectively. The...
Murder charges have been filed in the 2005 slaying of investigative reporter Marlene Garcia-Esperat in the Philippines, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Osmeña Montañer and Estrella Sabay were charged Monday as the alleged masterminds behind the murder. Montañer and Sabay were Mindano Department of Agriculture officials who Garcia-Esperat had accused of siphoning off money...
