Conflict Journalism

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has backed the appeal of its affiliate in Colombia, the Federación Colombiana de Periodistas (FECOLPER) for a silent march throughout the country on World Press Freedom Day to denounce continuing threats against journalists and to call on the government to provide them with protection. The appeal followed recent threats made against FECOLPER...

Anyone who dares to speak out in Syria continues to be exposed to arbitrary arrest. One of the latest victims is Omar Koush, a writer and journalist from Aleppo, was arrested on arrival at Damascus airport Monday after participating in a conference in Turkey. He wrote an article on April 29 titled “Turkey: dual relations between Arab countries on the one hand and Islamist organizations on the...

Responding to restrictions and attacks on its staff, Al-Jazeera has suspended its operations inside Syria indefinitely, the Qatar-based news network told the Committee to Protect Journalists today. Damascus has subjected Syrian employees of Al-Jazeera to sustained pressure to resign from the widely viewed satellite news channel, the station's Public Liberties and Human Rights Section told CPJ...

One of the leaked US defence department cables released this week by WikiLeaks reveals details about Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s abduction and murder in Pakistan in January 2002 and the divisions it caused within Al-Qaeda. According to the cable, Al-Qaeda member Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks) told his interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay...

Haider Mohamed Al-Noaimi, a blogger and journalist who works for various media including the opposition newspaper Al-Wasat, was arrested by about 30 men who came to his home on the evening of April 24 and confiscated his computer and cameras before taking him away. They reportedly hit him during the raid. His Facebook profile, where he posted his articles, has been blocked since April 3. Another...

Security forces surrounded the home of Akhbar Al-Youm reporter Mohammed Al-Louzi for three hours on April 25 because of his coverage of current events in Yemen. Members of the Republican Guard stopped Abdel Aziz Al-Majidi, the editor of the newspaper Al-Shahid, at a checkpoint the same day, preventing him from entering Taiz province. Copies of his newspaper were seized at the same checkpoint the...

A leaked US defence department cable released Monday by WikiLeaks reveals that part of the US government’s motive for holding Sudanese cameraman Sami Al-Haj for six years at its Guantanamo Bay prison camp was the information he could provide about his employer, the Qatar-based satellite TV station Al-Jazeera. Arrested by Pakistani security forces on the Afghan-Pakistani border in December 2001, Al...

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Bahraini authorities to disclose the whereabouts of Haidar Mohammed al-Nuaimi, a columnist for daily newspaper Al-Wasat. Roughly 30 uniformed and plainclothes police raided al-Nuaimi's family home in Manama April 25, dragging him into the street and beating him, local journalists told CPJ. Al-Nuaimi was then...

Anton Hammerl, a freelance South African photographer who was detained in early April, has appeared in government custody in Libya and is apparently in good health. Global Post told CPJ that the South African government has received information from Libyan authorities that Hammerl is well and will be permitted to speak to his family soon. Clare Morgana Gillis, an American freelancer for The...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has deplored an attack on Pakistani journalist Naveed Kamal, of Metro One TV, who is in a coma after two motorcyclists shot him in the jaw as he was going home from work in Karachi on April 20. The attack was a shock and had put all journalists under pressure, said Pervaiz Shaukat, secretary-general of the Pakistan Federal Union of...