Asia

An Afghan reporter working for the Pashtu service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been killed in the southern province of Helmand, Afghan officials said on Sunday. The body of 25-year-old Abdol Samad Rohani, was found near the city of Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, one day after he was abducted. Rohani disappeared after his vehicle was stopped...

China has begun to restrict local and foreign coverage of the aftermath of the May 12 earthquake. Several international media outlets have reported the harassment and temporary detention of reporters at the hands of local officials, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The moves come after a brief period in which the government appeared to relax its normally...

A high-ranking police official has filed two separate criminal complaints alleging that a BBC correspondent insulted the monarchy—charges that the journalist and the BBC have called unfounded. The police official, Lt Col Wattanasak Mungkandee, reportedly brought the complaints in a personal capacity against BBC correspondent Jonathan Head. Violations of lese majeste laws are a criminal offence...

Afghan journalist Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, editor of the monthly Haqoq-e-Zan (Women’s Rights), has been released after being held for 86 days in an intelligence ministry prison in the holy city of Qom (150 km southwest of Tehran). “Nazab was held arbitrarily for three months,” Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) reported. “The conditions were difficult and he was in solitary confinement for most...

A year after the gruesome muder of Zakia Zaki, the director Sada-e-Solh (Peace Radio), her killers remain unpunished. Her husband says there has been no progress in the official investigation, probably because of pressure from those who ordered her murder. Zaki was shot in her home in Jabalussaraj, in the northern Afghanistan province of Parwan, in the early hours of June 6, 2007. “Today we pay

Lawyers for a Canadian television journalist being held as an enemy combatant in Afghanistan filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing the Bush administration of holding him illegally and demanding his release, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. Afghani native Jawed Ahmad, 22, has been held in Bagram, Afghanistan, for more than six months without being charged, according to the complaint filed in US...

Chinese media is still forbidden to refer openly to the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989. Censorship is also extremely severe on the Internet. "The Chinese authorities are trying to use the Olympic Games to make people forget what happened on June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square," Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. "But the sports events and the festivities that will take place in this...

(Reuters): Afghan television journalist Niloufar Habibi never wore the all-enveloping burqa until she was stabbed on her doorstep. Now it is her disguise. More than six years after the overthrow of the Taliban, Afghanistan remains a deeply conservative country where many still oppose women working in public, visible roles. "If I go outside people will see where I'm going and see what I'm doing,"...

A Sri Lankan journalist working in the war-torn northern region and his friend have been hacked to death, a media rights group said Thursday. P Devakumar, 36, a correspondent for the privately-run Sirasa television, was murdered on Wednesday, the Free Media Movement (FMM) said. Devakumar is the ninth media worker to have been killed in Jaffna since 2006, FMM said. Three more journalists have also...

The FMM reports with deep sadness that yet another journalist has been murdered in Jaffna, in the embattled Northern Province of Sri Lanka. The FMM vehemently condemns this dastardly act and extends its condolences to the late journalist's wife and family. P. Devakumar, a correspondent for Sirasa TV, Shakthi radio and the MTV Television Network-Jaffna district, was hacked to death on the evening...