Asia

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has commended a threat made against journalist Liu Jianfeng on July 9, after he refused to take a bribe from officials in Jiangxi province in eastern China. Liu, a journalist with China Economic Times, received a life-threatening note after he reported on his blog that people had drowned during floods in Jiangxi on July 8. Officials acknowledge...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has welcomed the successful mediation of a dispute between Indonesia's police forces and Tempo magazine by the country's Press Council. The June 28 issue of Tempo featured an illustration showing a uniformed policeman with piggy banks on its cover, for the story "Fat Bank Accounts of Police Officers", on alleged suspicious bank accounts held by...

Miguel Belen, a reporter for radio dwEB in Nabua (in the eastern Philippines province of Camarines Sur), was seriously wounded in a shooting as he was returning to his home in Iriga on the evening of July 9. At least four shots were fired at him by two men on a motorcycle. Hospitalised and in a serious condition, he has been placed under police protection, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has...

Malaysia has suspended the publication of a main opposition newspaper, in a move political rivals criticised Friday as a crackdown on dissent. Suara Keadilan, run by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim's Keadilan party, ran into trouble after the authorities said it violated publishing laws with a report this month which claimed a government agency is bankrupt, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP)...

Pyuthan based radio journalist Keshav Bohara was released Thursday night, according to nepalnews.com. This followed sustained pressure from organisations like the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) and National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Bohara, who is a radio journalist associated with Radio Mandavi of Pyuthan, contacted a police post at Gorusingay of Kapilvastu district at around 10...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has demanded action to secure the immediate release of two French journalists and their three Afghan assistants who have been held hostage since their abduction six months ago and a Japanese journalist missing for three months. Stéphane Taponier, Hervé Ghesquière, and their three Afghan assistants, working for France 3, were taken hostage in the...

A radio reporter in Nepal, Keshav Bohara, was abducted on Wednesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. The Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) told CPJ in an email message that a group claiming to have abducted Bohara contacted the secretary of the FNJ chapter in Pyuthan, Deepak Bhandari, by phone at 3 p.m. on Wednesday. FNJ quoted Bhandari as saying: “In the background I...

A legislative committee in Pakistan has forwarded a bill to the National Assembly that would restrict coverage “of suicide bombers, terrorists, bodies of victims of terrorism, statements and pronouncements of militants and extremist elements and other acts which, may, in any way, promote, aid or abet terrorists or terrorism.” According to The News International, the report of the committee was...

China's biggest national news agency launched its global, English-language television news network on Thursday as part of efforts to expand the communist government's influence abroad, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. Experts say China's media expansion also results from unhappiness with much of the international coverage of sensitive events in China such as Tibet and human rights. The...

Slightly more than 90 per cent of people in Japan polled last year about their use of five major kinds of media, including newspapers, television and the Internet, said they read newspapers every day, according to the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association. A survey conducted in October on some 4,100 people nationwide "confirmed that newspapers are a key medium indispensable in daily...