Europe - Central Asia

Prominent journalist and human rights activist Natalya Estemirova has been murdered in Chechnya. Estemirova, 50, was abducted Wednesday morning in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, as she was leaving her apartment for work, Reuters reported. She was found shot in the head and the chest in the neighbouring region of Ingushetia at around 5 p.m.. Estemirova was an activist with the Moscow-based human...

Kyrgyz freelance journalist Almazbek Tashiyev’s died in a hospital in the southern city of Osh on July 12 from the injuries he received when he was allegedly beaten up eight days earlier in the nearby town of Nookat by a police officer for unclear reasons. The authorities are investigating. Tashiyev, who was still conscious when admitted to hospital, said he was beaten up by about 10 policemen in...

A bill regulating online communications and content has been signed into law by President Nursultan Nazarbayev. The new law gives blogs, chat rooms and other websites such as online retail outlets the same legal status as the Kazakh news media and thereby exposes them to the possibility of criminal prosecution. The bill, signed into law on July 13, will also enable the authorities to block...

A journalist at an independent Kazakh newspaper says death threats have been rolling in since the publication of an article she wrote exposing a prostitution ring in western Kazakhstan, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports. [ Link] Zhanara Davletova, a reporter for the regional Oral Weekly based in the city of Oral, told RFE/RL that she has been getting several phone calls daily from unknown people who...

Russian newspaper editor Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, who spent weeks in a coma after being attacked and beaten outside his home on April 29, succumbed to his injuries Monday in the southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don. He was 63. Yaroshenko, editor-in-chief of the Rostov-on-Don newspaper Korruptsiya i Prestupnost, was found unconscious with a head wound in the entrance of his apartment building early on...

A Paris court has found Tahiti-Pacifique editor Alex du Prel guilty of defaming public prosecutor Jean Bianconi in an article criticising the judicial probe into the 1997 disappearance of Jean-Pascal “JPK” Couraud, a leading investigative journalist based in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The court on Tuesday fined Du Prel 1,000 euros and...

Kazakh legislators on Thursday passed an Internet Bill, pending before Parliament since April 29, which will drastically curb online freedom by making it possible to bring criminal prosecutions against bloggers over what they write, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and Kazakh organisation Journalist In Danger have reported. President Nursultan Nazarbayev has not yet signed it into law. “There was a...

Russia's Supreme Court has overturned the acquittals of three men accused of involvement in the October 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya. A spokesman for the court said on Thursday that there were procedural violations during the trial, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. In February, a 12-member jury in Moscow acquitted Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) is pinning its hopes on the appointment of a new judge on June 3 to conduct the investigation into the death of Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of the Ingushetiya.ru (now Ingushetia.org) news website and opponent of former Ingush President Murat Zyazikov. Yevloyev was shot dead while in police custody in Magas, Ingushetia’s new capital, in August 2008. The appointment...

Authorities in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan are attempting to shut down the Makhachkala-based independent weekly Chernovik and have levelled extremism charges against editor Nadira Isayeva and four reporters, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. On Monday, the local branch of Russia's state media regulator Rossvyazkomnadzor filed a lawsuit against Chernovik in...