Asia

In a country with few critical news sources, Cambodia's Radio Free Asia (RFA) is taking on tough stories about illegal logging, government corruption, and human rights abuses. As RFA puts the government on the spot, its reporters are being subjected to threats and harassment. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), three of the station's 14 regular and on-call reporters have fled

Twenty members of the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) have set up a Burma Action Group to support protesters and journalists in their struggle against the recent military crackdown in the country. Participants at the IFEX general meeting last week in Montevideo, led by Soe Myint of Burmese exile-run news agency Mizzima News, called for a factfinding mission to the notoriously

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, October 2, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the recent arrest of freelance writer Lü Gengsong on subversion charges and calls for his immediate release. Lü's wife, Wang Xue'e, received notice on Sunday of her husband's arrest on charges of "inciting subversion of state power," according to Chinese human rights groups and news reports. The notice, from the...

The Supreme Court Friday stayed the Delhi High Court order sentencing four employees of tabloid Mid Day to jail for publishing news reports about former chief justice YK Sabharwal. The apex court stayed the high court's September 21 ruling sentencing two journalists, a cartoonist and the publisher of the tabloid to four months imprisonment each for contempt of court following news reports...

There is worldwide outrage at the apparently deliberate fatal shooting of Japanese cameraman Kenji Nagai by a Burmese soldier on Thursday. Video footage shown on Japan’s Fuji News Network has revealed that Nagai, who was filming near a group of demonstrators in Yangon, was pushed to the ground and shot at near point-blank range. The Japanese embassy in Burma said the bullet entered Nagai’s body...

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association (BMA) today condemned new attempts by Burma’s military rulers to exert pressure on foreign journalists and the Burmese media. Soldiers and police today descended on several hotels in Rangoon, including Traders, to check the IDs of foreign journalists there. Internet and international phone lines are still open at these hotels. A local...

Reporters Without Borders is appalled by the death of a Japanese news photographer on the streets of Rangoon this morning. Kenji Nagai, fifty years old, worked for the photoagency APF. He has been in Burma for two days. Another foreign journalist was reportedly injured. The press casualties came after the security forces opened fire on demonstrators near the Tarder Hotel in the centre of Rangoon...

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association are outraged by the measures adopted by the military junta to prevent journalists and activists covering the on-going crackdown on protests. Most of the country’s mobile phone lines have been cut and the Internet network has been drastically reduced. Charges by police and troops on demonstrators in Rangoon, especially near the Shwedagon...

At a demonstration close to the Burmese embassy in Paris on 27 September 2007, Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association launched an appeal to the UN Security Council to stop the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations within the country. The actor Jane Birkin also joined the rally to condemn the brutal policies of the Burmese regime towards the democracy movement and the...

There have been 24 serious violations of the freedom to report news and information against Burmese journalists trying to cover protests that began a month ago. The use of violence and censorship against journalists is a “detestable strategy” aimed at preventing them from doing their job, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and the Burma Media Association have said. This strategy has been accompanied...