Conflict Journalism

As the US troops begin their withdrawal from Iraqi cities today, many questions remain about the persons still detained by the US forces. Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reiterated its call for the release of Reuters photographer Ibrahim Jassam, who has been held since last September. “The US armed forces are now withdrawing from the main Iraqi cities after six years of occupation,” Paris...

Honduras President Manuel Zelaya’s ouster Sunday by the Army has been followed by a curfew during which the broadcasts of several radio and TV stations were suspended, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. As soon as the curfew had been decreed, the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) notified cable TV operators of a ban on broadcasting certain international TV stations such...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas government in the Gaza strip to release Palestinian journalists who have been arbitrarily detained by their respective security forces. "We condemn this latest crackdown against journalists in Palestine," said Paco Audije, IFJ Deputy General Secretary. "Our colleagues must not...

Eleven Sri Lankan journalists were driven into exile in the past 12 months amid an intensive government crackdown on critical reporters and editors, the Committee to Protect Journalists says in a new survey. The surge from Sri Lanka accounted for more than a quarter of the journalists worldwide who fled their native countries in the past year after being attacked, harassed, or threatened with

The Sri Lanka government has decided to restore the former Press Council, which will have the power to pass jail sentences on journalists and newspaper publishers. The decision comes amid continuing tension between the authorities and renewed threats against Jaffna-based Tamil newspapers. “A press council can be a useful tool for managing relations between the media and the public,” Paris-based...

Russia's Supreme Court has overturned the acquittals of three men accused of involvement in the October 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya. A spokesman for the court said on Thursday that there were procedural violations during the trial, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. In February, a 12-member jury in Moscow acquitted Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to end censorship of independent newspapers and to identify and prosecute those who assaulted Al-Jazeera journalists on two occasions in the south of the country. Yemen's popular daily, Al-Ayyam, the weeklies Al-Nida and Al-Watani, as well as five other independent newspapers, were banned...

American reporter David Rohde and his Afghan fixer Tahir Ludin have managed to escape from their Taliban captors who had been holding them for the past seven months. Their driver, Asadullah Mangal, is still being held. According to the New York Times, Rohde and Ludin escaped from the compound in which they were being held in North Waziristan, in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas, on June 19 and made their...

Officers of the Colombo Crimes Division (CCD) questioned the two journalists, editors of Sinhalese dailies, recently in an attempt to force them to reveal their sources for articles on sensitive subjects, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The editor of one of the newspapers, who asked not to be named, said members of the CCD went to his newspaper’s headquarters on the morning of June...

[Updates earlier story] Five-year prison sentences have been handed down by a military court in Cameroon to Jacques Blaise Mvié and Charles René Nwé, respectively deputy managing director and editor of weekly La Nouvelle for publishing “defence secrets," Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. To date, neither of the two journalists has actually been arrested. “The sentence...