Europe - Central Asia

There has been a string of threats issued against journalists in Southeast Europe, rendered particularly ominous by violent attacks on journalists throughout 2008. Last week, Drago Hedl, a columnist for the Croatian Jutarnji List, received an SMS threatening to "massacre" him, just as a parliament member accused of war crimes was holding a press conference during which he singled out for criticism

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has welcomed the defeat of so-called BKA law (anti-terrorism law) in the Bundesrat (Upper House of the German Parliament). Several Federal States abstained from the voting. "This is a very important victory for press freedom in Germany and in Europe," said EFJ President Arne König. "Our German affiliates, also in cooperation with all major media...

The staff of Channel 34 in the Ukranian city of Dniepropetrovsk have launched a hungerstrike protesting the liquidation of the company and the firing of its management. The employees of the Dniepropetrovsk Tele-visual Service (also known as Channel 34) announced the hungerstrike on air November 24, according to weekly PIK Ukrainy. From one day to the next, there has been expectation of an armed...

One of the alleged assailants of Armenian journalist Edik Baghdasarian, gave himself up to the police on November 26. Karen Haroutiunian refused to comment and his motives remain unknown, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières has reported. Very little is known about him or his accomplices in the brutal assault on the chairman of the investigative journalists’ association in Yerevan on the evening...

Stalina Gurevich, lawyer for newspaper editor Mikhail Beketov, who was attacked and brutally beaten on November 13, has announced a reward for information on those who instigated or carried out the attack and condemned lack of progress in the investigation. She joined Andrei Stolbunov, vice-president of the human rights organisation Spravedlivost (Justice) in offering a reward of 500,000 roubles...

Renewed death threats have been made against Drago Held, a journalist with daily Jutamji List, a specialist in the recent history of Croatia, and particularly war crimes during the civil war in ex-Yugoslavia (1991-1995). Drago Held, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) reported, was put under permanent police protection after receiving a voice message on his mobile phone on November 27...

Two independent newspapers that were dropped from official distribution networks for criticising the government have signed contracts that will allow them to appear in the state postal monopoly Belpocha’s newspaper subscription catalogue and to be on sale in the state-owned Belsayuzdruk’s chain of newsstands. The two newspapers are weekly Narodnaya Volya and fortnightly Nasha Niva, Reporters sans...

A Russian judge has lifted a ban on journalists covering the trial of three men accused of helping to murder journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya even as prosecutors asked for his removal over his flip-flops on media coverage. Judge Yevgeny Zubov ruled last week that the politically charged trial would be held behind closed doors, drawing fierce criticism from Politkovskaya's family...

Joseph Tual, a journalist with the French state-owned TV station France 3, was recently questionedby a court in Lille on suspicion of "violating professional confidentiality" in a report about new developments in the investigation into the 1965 disappearance of Moroccan opposition politician Medhi Ben Barka in Paris. Tual was summoned to a Lille court on November 20 in response to a complaint...

There has been a wave of attacks since the beginning of the month on Italian journalists working in Rome, in what seems to be a new campaign of intimidation by far-right groups. A TV crew from state-owned RAI-1’s news programme, TG1, was harassed on Sunday while doing a report in the Rome suburb of Il Trullo about racist attacks on immigrants by young Italians. The report followed the arrests of...