Conflict Journalism

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern over the safety of Khadija Abdul Qahaar, publisher of the website Jihad Unspun, who has been held by abductors in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas for more than four months. Qahaar, a Canadian who changed her name from Beverly Giesbrecht when she converted to Islam in 2002, disappeared on November 11, 2008, while...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed concern over the safety of Khadija Abdul Qahaar, publisher of the website Jihad Unspun, who has been held by abductors in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas for more than four months. Qahaar, a Canadian who changed her name from Beverly Giesbrecht when she converted to Islam in 2002, disappeared on November 11, 2008, while travelling...

Pakistani authorities must not allow Thursday's shooting death of veteran Pakistani reporter Raja Assad Hameed in Rawalpindi go uninvestigated and unprosecuted, the Committee to Protect Journalists has demanded. Hameed, who worked for local broadcaster Waqt TV and the English-language daily the Nation, and appeared regularly on Al-Jazeera broadcasts, was shot several times at close range outside...

A grenade attack was carried out on the headquarters of the Tamil daily newspaper Uthayan in the northern Sri Lankan city of Jaffna at about 11 p.m. Monday night. The grenade exploded in the patio of the building, causing considerable damage and injuring a police guard. “This was yet another attempt to stop distribution of Uthayan and comes less than a month after the arrest of N Vithyatharan, the...

Jawed Ahmad, an Afghan journalist who worked for Canadian media, including the broadcaster CTV News, was gunned down on March 10 by two men in a vehicle as he was getting out of his own car in the centre of the southern city of Kandahar, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Ahmad, also known as Jojo Yazemi, died on the spot. His body was taken to a nearby hospital where members of his...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for the release of the manager of the Poobalasingam Book Depot bookshop in Colombo, who was arrested by anti-terrorism police at his home in the Colombo suburb of Wellawatte on March 5 for sending copies of Ananda Vikatan, a Tamil weekly magazine published in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, to another branch of the same bookshop in Jaffna, in the...

US federal authorities have confirmed that 92 videotapes detailing the interrogation of detainees at secret prisons were destroyed in 2005 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) is urging the new Obama administration to lead an investigation into this infringement upon the American people's constitutional rights and punish those who are responsible. "The sheer...

Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has condemned Deputy Prime Minister Abdirahman Ibbi's recent statements on Radio Garowe criticising Somalia's independent news media and threatening to combat them. Ibbi is both deputy premier and minister of fisheries and marine resources in the new national unity government. "The deputy prime minister is picking on the wrong people," RSF said. "Somalia's...

Oleg Salnikov, author of the article "Ordinary Fascism Attempts to Take Root on These Isles" published by the newspaper Gubernskiye Vedomosti, has been receiving death threats, according to the Glasnost Defence Foundation (GDF) . The story about an extremist organisation led by two former law enforcement officers was also posted on the website of the Sakhalin-Kurily news agency, triggering a...

Guinea-Bissau’s broadcast media were allowed to resume operating shortly after midday on Monday after being ordered off the air Sunday night following the murder of the armed forces chief of staff, which was followed in turn early Monday by the murder of President Joao Bernardo “Nino” Vieira. “Amid the current instability, we urge all of Guinea-Bissau’s actors, especially the armed forces, to...