West Asia - North Africa

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), headed by the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, has been waging a hate campaign for the past week against Lvin magazine, accusing it of besmirching the memory of Barzani’s father, the late Kurdish nationalist leader Mullah Mostafa Barzani. The offending article in Lvin magazine, published on August 1, consisted of an interview...

The Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) has sued magazine Rojname for $1 billion. A report published in the magazine on July 20 had accused the KDP and its ruling coalition partner, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), of helping smuggle refined petroleum products into Iran in violation of the international sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic by the UN Security Council. The article accused the...

Sudan has lifted censorship of newspapers. National Intelligence and Security Service NISS Chief Mohamed Atta announced this on Saturday, according to the state-run Sundan Media Centre. NISS said it had observed that the "newspapers have committed to principles and guidelines set for publicity such as being précised (sic) on information set for publicity and observing national interest of the...

Sudan halted Monday BBC broadcasts in Arabic on FM radio frequencies after suspending its agreement with the British public broadcaster for reasons it said had nothing to do with its newscasts, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. In a statement carried by the official Suna news agency late on Sunday, the information ministry alleged that the BBC had imported technical equipment via British...

There has been a new wave of harassment and violence against journalists in the occupied Palestinian Territories as the political tension between Hamas and Fatah continues to take its toll on the media. In one of the latest cases, Ahmed Fayadh of the Aljazeeranet news website was beaten by police Thursday in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government, is pursuing a defamation complaint against an opposition weekly, Rozhnama. The complaint, filed under Saddam Hussein-era criminal statutes, seeks US$1 billion in damages and the closing of the newspaper, according New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). "It...

A journalist of Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper was killed in clashes between the Israeli and Lebanese armies which erupted Tuesday, shattering several years of relative calm on the tense Israel-Lebanon border. The Lebanese news site NOW Lebanon named the journalist as Assaf Abu Rahal, according to the International Press Institute (IPI). Arab news reports also said Ali Chouayb, a journalist working...

There has been a series of fresh threats and acts of intimidation against journalists in Yemen. The political class seems to have no qualms about using violence against journalists who write about corruption or embezzlement. Utterly illegal and arbitrary arrests are becoming commonplace, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The situation is becoming more...

Iran's deputy culture minister lashed out at Western media on Sunday, branding them "dishonest, cocky cheats," who will be banned from an annual press fair in the autumn, the ILNA news agency reported. "This year none of the Western media are allowed to participate in the fair," said Mohammad Ali Ramin, who is also a press watchdog official. "We have eliminated them, because Western media are...

Amer Abu Arfa, a correspondent for the Shihab news agency, has been convicted and imprisoned in connection with his news coverage. The agency, based in the Gaza Strip, is perceived by the Palestinian Authority as being pro-Hamas. Abu Arfa was arrested on May 11 by Palestinian security forces, according to his father, who told Shihab that his son was taken from their home by the Palestinian...