Asia

Bangladeshi investigative journalist Tasneem Khalil has fled the country with his family for security reasons, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. They had previously spent a month in hiding after he was arrested and tortured in May. Khalil, 26, is a journalist for the Dhaka-based Daily Star newspaper who conducts research for Human Rights Watch (HRW). According to his wife, four men in...

The Roh Moo-hyun administration has decided to take disciplinary measures against South Korean journalists and their companies that do not abide by the "news embargoes'' set by government offices. The Government Information Agency (GIA) Tuesday unveiled a plan to implement it as early as next month, the Korea Times reported. Journalists who violate embargoes would be banned from interviewing...

One year before the 2008 Olympics open in Beijing, the Chinese government is violating commitments on media freedom it made to the International Olympics Committee by continuing to harass, intimidate and detain foreign journalists and their local colleagues, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. In this video image released by Students for a Free Tibet, Canadian Tibet supporters...

A US congressional committee plans to investigate whether Yahoo Inc lied during testimony over its role in a human rights case in China that sent journalist Shi Tao to jail for 10 years. Announcing the investigation, House of Representatives foreign affairs committee chairman Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, Friday last it would be shameful if it was confirmed that Yahoo had known why the...

Burma’s Press Scrutiny and Registration Board has prohibited non government newspapers and magazines in the country from carrying advertisements in all foreign languages except English. The ban comes in the aftermath of English-language Myanmar Times carrying an advertisement by a Denmark-based satirical art group with a hidden message calling the country's top military ruler Gen Than Shwe a...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the government’s political exploitation of the fact that a much-commented TV report about pork buns made with cardboard supposedly turned out to have been fabricated. The authorities have used it to launch a campaign against fake news reports with "heavy penalties" for the journalists responsible. "Journalist Zi Beijia’s arrest has enabled the institutions...

New York, July 23, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for greater transparency in the arrest of a Chinese reporter accused of fabricating news. Police arrested Beijing TV reporter Zi Beijia last week and are holding him in criminal custody following accusations that he faked a report on contaminated steamed buns, according to state news reports. “Whether or not Zi Beijia was guilty of...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the government’s decision to obstruct foreign and Burmese press coverage of a national convention that has the job of writing a new constitution. No foreign journalist has been given a visa, while Burmese journalists were granted only very limited access to yesterday’s opening session. “This convention is in fact an institutional sham, and the military...

(Mizzima/IFEX) - The Burmese junta has imposed restrictions on media coverage of the National Convention on the drafting of the constitution, to be held on 18 July 2007. Burma has been without a constitution since 1988, when its 1974 charter was suspended following a coup led by a new junta regime. In invitation letters to local media and foreign news agencies in Rangoon, the convening committee...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned a purge of staff last week at Minzhu yu Fazhi Shibao (Democracy and Legal Times), a weekly specialising in legal news that is considered to be one of China’s ten most influential newspapers. "Censorship takes different forms in China," the press freedom organisation said. "Closures of websites, blogs or newspapers are the most visible of the many press...