Europe - Central Asia

An Istanbul court has convicted the daily newspaper Günlük of "spreading PKK propaganda" in two issues of the paper, the IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET) has reported. According to journalist Ragip Zarakolu, Kurdish media is targeted frequently. Judge Necat Ede of Istanbul's 12th Heavy Penal Court cited Article 6 of the Anti-Terrorism Law, an article which former President Ahmet Necdet Sezer...

Nedim Sener, a reporter for the daily Milliyet, who has written a book about the murder of journalist Hrant Dink, faces up to 28 years in prison after police officers filed complaints against him, the IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET) has reported. Sener's book is titled The Dink Murder and Intelligence Lies. The book deals with the gendarmerie, police and national intelligence officers who...

Several news media outlets have been waging an aggressive campaign against “Life in Kosovo,” an investigative programme broadcast by public TV service RTK, and the programme’s presenter, Jeta Xharra, who has received death threats. The campaign started after a "Life in Kosovo" report about alleged atrocities by the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) during the 1998-99 Kosovo War. "A Life in Kosovo" crew...

Abduvakhab Moniev, the deputy editor of the Kyrgyz-language weekly Achyg Sayasat (Open Politics), was severely assaulted by an unidentified individual on June 5 in Bishkek, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The newspaper has often been the target of harassment by the authorities. “The increase in harassment of the media in the run-up to the July 23 presidential election is worrying,”...

A Slovak government agency should immediately drop a civil complaint against the daily SME that was filed when the newspaper refused to print a response to a column under a controversial right-of-reply law, the International Press Institute (IP) has demanded. The complaint, filed by the Inspectorate for the Environment, is the first time a civil case has been pressed against a newspaper under the...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned condemns the detention of journalist Aylin Duruoglu, the editor of the daily Vatan’s website, Gazetevatan.com, for the past five weeks on a charge of collaborating with an outlawed armed organisation. Arrested on April 27, she is now being held in Istanbul’s Bakirköy prison. “Duruoglu is the victim of inexplicable judicial persecution,” RSF said. “If...

Serbia's war crimes prosecutor has launched a probe into the role of journalists in stoking war crimes during 1991-1995 wars in the former Yugoslavia, Reuters reported quoting an official on Monday. The Special War Crime Prosecutor's office plans to focus on links between war-mongering reporting and 1991-92 atrocities in the Croatian and Bosnian towns of Vukovar and Zvornik. Some details from the...

Russian news agencies RIA Novosti and Interfax have launched a joint project set to cover important national news in around 600 regional media. The details: [ Link] “This project is revolutionary as two rival agencies—the independent Interfax agency and the federal state RIA Novosti agency—are carrying out a joint media project for the first time,” RIA Novosti Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk...

Privately-owned Rrokum TV in Kosovo is still suspended by the Kosovar broadcasting network and internet provider IPKO, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Although it has a contract guaranteeing its transmission for five years, Rrokum TV was dropped from IPKO’s network of 80 local, regional and international TV stations without warning on April 1. IPKO has at first blamed technical...

Three more suspects have been arrested for the October 2008 murders of Ivo Pukanic, owner and editorial director of the Zagreb-based political weekly Nacional, and Niko Franjic, the publication's marketing director. Three other suspects had been arrested in November 2008. Pukanic and Franjic were killed on October 23, 2008, when a bomb exploded under the editor's car, which was parked outside the...