Europe - Central Asia

The current situation of the media in Kyrgyzstan reflects the confusion and uncertainty that has prevailed in the country as a whole since the unrest that allowed the opposition to seize power six days ago, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Although the ousted president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has fled the capital, he is still refusing to stand down. Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE...

The Turkish interior ministry has asked the judicial authorities to investigate five police officers attached to the Security Directorate in Istanbul on suspicion of failing to take the threats against newspaper editor Hrant Dink seriously and failing to protect him, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Dink, who was of Armenian origin, was gunned down in January 2007. The five policemen...

The Kiev police interrogated online journalist and blogger Olena Bilozerska and photographer Olexiy Furman of the Photolenta agency and searched their homes in the past few days in a bid to obtain information about participants in protests, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Bilozerska and Furman were summoned to a police station, respectively on March 30 and in early March. They were...

Authorities in Kyrgyzstan should halt their ongoing crackdown on independent and opposition news outlets, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. A Bishkek court suspended a pro-opposition newspaper on Wednesday—the third such suspension in March—while financial police confiscated newsroom computers belonging to an independent Web-based television channel on Thursday, effectively...

Vedat Kursun, the biggest shareholder in Turkey’s only Kurdish-language daily, Azadiya Welat (Free Country), was sentenced to three years in prison by a court in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir on March 30 on a charge of propaganda for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. The newspaper’s managing editor until jailed last year, Kursun is the...

Vasyl Demyaniv, the editor of the local weekly Kolomyiski Visnyk, was violently attacked as he was returning home on the evening of March 23 in the western Ukraine city of Kolomyia, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. Demyaniv was hospitalised with severe head injuries and a broken leg following the attack, in which unidentified assailants repeatedly kicked him and beat him about the head...

A number of Turkish journalists are facing sentences for doing their job. Since an amendment to the anti-terrorism law took effect in 2006, media personnel have been exposed to the possibility of long spells in jail just for covering ordinary news developments including judicial proceedings, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. One of the latest victims is photographer Nurettin Kurt of the...

Igor Larra, a correspondent for the Almaty-based independent weekly Svoboda Slova (Freedom of Speech), was attacked in the city of Aktobe that left him with a concussion and other head injuries, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Larra (a pen name for the journalist Igor Kim) had extensively covered a strike by workers for the national oil producer KazMunayGas in the southwestern...

A Bishkek court has ordered the temporary closure of two newspapers, Achyk Sayasat and Nazar, and fined them 5 million som (82,000 euros) for publishing an opinion piece by a government opponent in exile accusing President Kurmanbek Bakiev, who became president after a coup d’état, of lacking legitimacy, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). In a ruling issued on March 18, the court found...

The Belarusian Supreme Court has upheld a government order that will obstruct the work of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), the country’s most prominent press freedom and media support organisation, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The court backed a directive issued in January by the Ministry of Justice that orders the association, known as BAJ, to halt...