Asia

A woman journalist covering the plight of Cyclone Nargis victims seeking aid from international NGOs in Rangoon has been detained by for over two weeks, according to her publication, Mizzima News has reported. Eint Khaing Oo, 24, a journalist with the weekly journal Ecovision, was arrested on June 10 as she covered the story of cyclone victims approaching NGOs for aid, according to an executive...

British journalist Sean Langan has been released after being abducted and held in Afghanistan for three months by a group associated with the Taliban, the Press Associaiton (PA) has reported. The freelance reporter was working for the Channel 4 programme Dispatches when he was abducted on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some details: A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office...

Seven policemen have been arrested for allegedly torturing a reporter from private television channel Geo English and attempting to illegally detain him on Monday, the Daily Times has reported. Reporter Syed Essa Hassan Naqvi told Daily Times the men allegedly tried to detain him as he left a snooker club in Commercial Market, and that when he told the policemen he was a reporter they attacked him...

A South Korean journalist was deported from Burma by the ruling military junta on June 22 for visiting the office of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). Lee Yu Kyong, a freelance journalist from South Korea, was deported to Thailand, according to Mizzima News. "At about 7:00 am, five policemen from Special Branch (a police unit in Rangoon) arrived at my hotel. They asked me where I...

Twenty-nine global media organisations have appealed to the United Nations to put pressure on Sri Lanka to protect journalists, who have been described as "enemies of the state" for being critical of the government's role in the civil war in the country. The media organisations affiliated to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon that...

A three-year jail sentence in absentia has been handed down to journalist Amal Eisa, formerly of the Qatari daily al-Sharq, for "defamation" on the basis of a complaint from the Hamad public hospital in Doha. "This extremely harsh penalty, even though partly linked to the absence of the journalist from the trial hearing, sends a dangerous signal to all journalists in the emirate," Paris-based...

An Iranian newspaper has been banned for criticising the performance of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the last three years, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported quoting official news agency IRNA on Sunday. The daily Tehran Emrouz (Tehran Today) had criticised Ahmadinejad's economic and foreign policies in a special bulletin Saturday on the occasion of the third anniversary of his election. "We have...

Kook TV, a local station based in Multan, in the east-central Pakistani province of Punjab, was attacked by about 60 people who stormed into its offices, assaulted one of its journalists, seriously injuring him, and inflicted about 1 million rupees (approx. 10,000 euros) in damage to equipment. Kook TV editor in chief Zubair Naseer told Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF): "Individuals...

Leading Taiwan daily China Times plans to lay off nearly half of its 1,200 staff due to financial problems, union and newspaper officials said Wednesday, according to a Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) report. "In the face of a widening deficit and streamlining of the newspaper, a largescale redundancy in terms of people and facilities is inevitable," publisher Chou Sheng-yuan said in an internal...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on the Pakistani federal government and information minister Sherry Rehman in particular to publish the results of the investigations into the death of Hayatullah Khan, a reporter in Pakistan’s northeastern Tribal Areas, whose body was found two years ago, six months after his still unexplained abduction. "Pakistan is currently outraged by the death of 11...