Asia

KABUL: Afghanistan’s government, competing with the Taliban for public support and trying to fend off accusations that it is corrupt and ineffective, is moving to curb one of its own most impressive achievements: the country’s flourishing independent news media. Under President Hamid Karzai, a 1960s media law was updated and has been considered the most liberal in the region. Six independent...

Mizzima News Agency has been awarded the 2007 Free Media Pioneer Award by the International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists. Managing Editor Sein Win will receive the prize on behalf of Mizzima at an award ceremony on May 15 during the IPI World Congress in Istanbul, Turkey (May 12-15, 2007). Mizzima News was founded in August 1998 by...

The Singapore government has banned an independent film about a former top journalist and political activist who was held without trial for 17 years in the island republic, deeming the documentary to be "against public interests". Said Zahari with his wife. Zahari's 17 years by local filmmaker Martyn See is a 49-minute interview with Said Zahari about his arrest and subsequent detention under the...

A court in Xingjian, north-west China has sentenced Ablikim Abdiriyim, the son of renowned Uigar activist, Rebiya Kadeer, to nine years in prison for posting “secessionist” articles online, in what Reporters Without Borders called a “travesty of a trial”. China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that the 17 April verdict indicated that the young activist had sent the offending articles to the...

The Afghanistan government has ordered a TV station to suspend broadcasts of Al-Jazeera’s English-language programmes, the station’s director said Tuesday. A statement from Lemar TV said the Ministry of Information and Culture, which oversees media in Afghanistan, did not provide reasons for the order. The station complied, but contested the order before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the...

The body of slain Afghan journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi was buried Wednesday in Afghan capital Kabul as hundreds of mourners attended his funeral. Naqshbandi, 26, a freelance journalist, was beheaded on April 8 by Taliban extremists as the Afghan government refused to release Taliban prisoners in exchange. Hundreds turned out to pray in the street and see the journalist’s coffin lowered into the sun...

Taliban militiamen have beheaded Afghan journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi who had been held capitive since March 4, news reports have said. The death of Naqshbandi came on a day of heavy violence in Afghanistan that also saw the deaths of seven North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) soldiers in roadside bombings in the south. A government official confirmed Naqshbandi’s slaying hours after a...

An Indonesian court has cleared Playboy Indonesia's editor-in-chief of distributing indecent pictures to the public and making money from them after a high-profile trial that exposed deep divisions in the Muslim-majority nation A group of Indonesian hardliner Muslims shout slogan after trial of editor-in-chief of Playboy Indonesia Erwin Arnada, Thursday, April 5, 2007, in Jakarta Indonesia...

When Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf moved to contain the judicial crisis engulfing his regime, the country's mainstream media were among the first casualties. But no threat was directed at Pakistan's radical jihadi press, which has been just as critical of the president's decision to suspend Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry three weeks ago. Critics say the discrepancy underscores how...

Foreign militants killed the brother, father, uncle, and cousin of Urdu-language Inkishaf reporter Din Mohammed at his home in South Waziristan in apparent retribution for his work, colleagues told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Three other family members were also abducted. Pakistani tribesmen stand guard at a checkpoint in Wana, the main town of the South Wziristan region bordering...