ARCHIVES: Europe - Central Asia
Nikol Pashinian, an opposition activist and editor-in-chief of the independent Armenia daily Haykakan Zhamanak , was recently beaten in custody and moved into solitary confinement, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. On Tuesday, authorities moved Pashinian into the strict-regime Artik prison. Pashinian's lawyer, Vakhe Grigorian, told CPJ that the move was in retaliation for editorials Pashinian wrote from prison and published in Haykakan Zhamanak . He wrote... MORE
Human rights reporter Azimjon Askarov was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Jalal-Abad region, southern Kyrgyzstan, on Wednesday, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Judge Nurgazy Alimbayev pronounced Askarov guilty on a wide range of charges, including complicity to commit homicide and murder of a police officer (two separate counts related to the same incident), possession of ammunition and extremist literature, and attempted... MORE
Award-winning Colombian journalist Claudia Julieta Duque has been refused entry to Britain. Duque was invited by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) to give a speech about her work in upholding human rights. The UK government had previously praised her work exposing human rights abuses in Colombia. Both NUJ and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) have condemned the decision. NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear said, "Claudia is in Europe to receive awards for her brave and... MORE
A 146-year-old weekly newspaper in Northumberland in UK has launched a paid-for digital edition which will be published prior to content being made freely available online. The digital edition of the Hexham Courant , its supplements and special publications, will be placed online each week priced 55p for those who take out a year’s subscription, the Press Gazette has reported. The details: [ Link ] Publication is timed to coincide with that of the 70p weekly print edition which is sold across... MORE
France's newspapers are kept in a state of "permanent artificial respiration" by the annual billion euros in state aid they get and badly need to shake themselves up to survive, a report said Thursday. The government-commissioned report lamented that the massive subsidies had failed to create the "emergence or the presence of political and general press titles that were strong and not dependent on public aid." The aid even had the effect of discouraging newspapers from trying to find... MORE
Belarusian authorities must thoroughly investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Aleh Byabenin (Oleg Bebenin), founder and director of the Minsk-based pro-opposition news website Charter 97, press freedom groups have demanded. Byabenin's brother and several friends found the journalist hanging from a stairway in his summer house outside the capital city of Minsk on Friday at around 5 p.m., Natalya Radina, editor of Charter 97, told New York-based press freedom group Committee to... MORE
A witness in the case of missing editor Vasyl Klymentyev has also gone missing, according to Petro Matvienko, deputy editor-in-chief of Noviy Stil newspaper. Matvienko refused to name the witness in order to avoid compromising the investigation, according to a report released by the UNIAN news agency. He also refused to cite the source for his information but said he had verified it. He said that the disappearance of the witness is the result of the failure of law enforcement agencies to carry... MORE
Russian police, some armed and masked, raided a prominent opposition magazine on Thursday as part of an unspecified investigation. The three-hour raid on the New Times , an independent Moscow-based weekly, was carried out by armed and masked police officers led by Col Stanislav Pashkovsky, the head of the General Directorate of Internal Affairs (GUVD) for the Moscow region, who wanted to identify the sources for a February exposé on riot police corruption and abuses. Col Pashkovsky was after... MORE
More than 2,000 journalists working for the BBC at centres across the UK have voted in favour of strike action in protest at planned reforms to their pension scheme. Figures released Wednesday night by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) reveal the extent to which its members are angered by management proposals to cap their pension contributions. Of around 3,500 NUJ members at the BBC, 2,251 voted in the ballot with 2,107 (94 per cent) voting for strike action and 2,175 (97 per cent) voting... MORE
Kurdish publications have again been suspended or seized under the Anti-Terrorism Law (Law 3713), which allows the Turkish courts to impose harsh penalties on journalists and media when they allude to Kurdish armed separatists and fosters a repressive climate for the Kurdish media. Although the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly condemned Turkey because of the Anti-Terrorism Law, the country’s constitutional court has refused to consider overturning it. In the latest case, an... MORE
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