Europe - Central Asia

A court in the western city of Ural ordered on April 21 a local newspaper, Uralskaya Nedela (Ural Week) and one of its reporters, Lukpan Akhmedyarov, to pay 20 million tenges (136,000 dollars) in damages to an oil industry company, especially as the size of the award could force the weekly to close, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). In an article headlined “Hidden invitations to tender...

Moscow’s Savyolovsky district court on April 21 ordered French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) to pay 250,000 rubles (6,000 euros) in damages to the pro-Putin youth movement Nashi for a September 2009 article about Nashi’s activities, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Nashi has also sued the French daily Le Monde, the British daily The Independent, and other media. The youth...

Azerbaijani authorities must comply with the European Court of Human Rights’ decision ordering the immediate release of imprisoned editor Eynulla Fatullayev, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Fatullayev, a 2009 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, has been jailed for three years on fabricated charges. The Strasbourg-based European Court has recently ruled that...

The Kyrgyzstan provisional government’s Coordinating Council in the southern region of Osh introduced a new system of censorship on April 15, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). and reiterates its appeal to interim President Rosa Otunbayeva’s administration to keep its promises to respect the rule of law. The opposition to ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s government’s criticised its...

Members of the Kyrgyz counter-espionage service temporarily overran the office of independent news agency 24.kg in Bishkek on April 15, eight days after the revolt that toppled President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Journalists said armed men, led by Aspekov Talant, the head of the service, stormed into the office and, without giving any reason, announced that...

The Kiev police have stepped up their attempts to harass and intimidate journalist and blogger Olena Bilozerska in connection with her coverage of a demonstration outside an animal fur store in February, in which smoke grenades and eggs with paint were thrown at the store, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). When she was interrogated again on April 13 by a police inspector, he was...

Authorities in the unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) are holding for treason journalist Ernest Vardanian in the regional capital of Tiraspol since April 7, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Vardanian is being held in an isolation unit and without officially stated charges, according to news reports. On April 9, at a closed-door hearing at the Tiraspol City...

There has been an alarming deterioration in the press freedom situation in Ukraine since the two-round presidential election on January 17 and February 7, which was won by Viktor Yanukovych, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Despite the persistence of self-censorship, Ukraine had risen significantly in the RSF press freedom index in recent years, but the past three months have seen a...

A Spanish court April 12 acquitted five journalists who ran the Basque-language daily Euskaldunon Egunkaria of all charges of links to the Basque armed separatist group ETA, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The charges were brought against the journalists in 2003 and, as a result, the newspaper had been closed since February 20, 2003 on the orders of a National Court judge, Juan de...

The Moscow police on Wednesday made an abortive attempt to search the premises of the Moscow-based independent weekly The New Times/ Novoye Vremya in execution of a court order that is the subject of an appeal by the weekly, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Moscow’s Tverskoi district court issued the search order on April 5 in response to a libel action by the elite Omon police and...