Europe - Central Asia

The International Federation of Journalists has called for a "wide-ranging and honest" debate within Bulgarian journalism over intolerance in media following the presentation of a journalism prize by press owners to a reporter who has a reputation for hate-speech. IFJ says the award of this year's Chernorizetz Hrabur Young Journalist of the Year prize to Kalin Rumenov, a journalist with the...

Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of a Russian opposition Internet site who was shot dead on Sunday, was the latest in a series of Russian journalists to have been killed or to die in suspicious circumstances. Media freedom groups say Russia is one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists and that no one has been prosecuted over most of the deaths. Here are some of the most high-profile...

Russian federal authorities must undertake a thorough, independent, and transparent investigation into Sunday’s shocking death of Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the popular news website Ingushetiya, who was killed in the custody of police in Ingushetia, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Yevloyev died from a gunshot wound to the head while being transported by Ingush police following...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on authorities in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan to end their month-long offensive against the opposition weekly Chernovik ("Rough Draft") in the regional capital, Makhachkala. Investigators with the local prosecutor's office and officers with the Criminal Investigation (UR) department of Dagestan's Interior Ministry searched the...

Three journalists - Giga Chikhladze, correspondent of Russian Newsweek and head of Alania TV, Alexander Klimchuk, head of the photo agency Caucasus Press Images and correspondent for the news agency Itar-Tass, and Stan Storimans, cameraman for the Dutch TV station RTL-4 - have been killed since fighting began in Georgia on August 8. The death of a fourth journalist, a Georgian, and his driver...

A veteran reporter with the Tel Aviv-based Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth was severely injured on Tuesday in an attack in the central Georgian city of Gori. It was the same attack that killed Dutch cameraman Stan Storimans and injured his RTL Nieuws colleague Jeroen Akkermans. Zadok Yehezkeli suffered injuries to the stomach, leg, chest, and shoulder, and underwent two operations in a...

Stan Storimans, a cameraman with Netherlands-based television channel RTL Nieuws, was killed Tuesday during bombing in the central Georgian city of Gori. His colleague, reporter Jeroen Akkermans, suffered shrapnel wounds to his leg and was hospitalised in a Tbilisi clinic, Jaspir Teijsse, a spokesman for RTL Nieuws, told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Storimans was 39...

Two journalists were reported killed, at least eight were injured, and two have gone missing since fighting erupted between Georgian, Russian, and local forces in the disputed region of South Ossetia, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). No press-related casualties have been immediately reported in the conflict in another breakaway Georgian region, Abkhazia. The...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Monday called on Russian, Georgian and any other combat forces involved in the conflict in the region to respect the rights of media workers and protect their safety after it received reports that two journalists were killed and at least two others wounded in South Ossetia. Georgian Alexander Klimchuk, a photojournalist working for Russian news...

Regional authorities in Dagestan have decided to open a criminal case against Nadira Isayeva, editor-in-chief of an independent weekly, after the newspaper quoted a former guerilla leader in an article. According to news website Lenta, regional prosecutors in Dagestan's capital, Makhachkala, charged Isayeva with making public calls to extremism and incitement of hatred; if convicted, she faces up...