Conflict Journalism

(FNJ/IFEX) - Pabitra Kumar Khadka, central representative of the FNJ and Sindhupalchowk correspondent for the national daily "Gorkhapatra ", was threatened with death on 18 June 2007 by Sub-Inspector Surendra Basnet and Constable Keshab Raut of the area police office in Barabise, Sindhupalchowk, a district in central Nepal. Khadka was threatened for not disclosing the source of a news report...

Reporters Without Borders voiced alarm today about a new wave of threats and attacks on journalists in May and June, in which the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have often been to blame. The organisation is also worried about hostility towards the media displayed in recent student protests against an announced cut in government funding for state universities. “The...

The Sri Lankan government has blocked access from within Sri Lanka to TamilNet, a website hosted in Norway which provides alternative reports on local events. The move marks the employment of a new and more extreme form of censorship than ever before. “This is a blatant and unjustified attack on freedom of expression” said Agnès Callamard, Executive Director, ARTICLE 19. “Until now, control...

Journalists in Yemen rallied in protest after police arrested a Yemeni opposition editor accused of backing the country's Shiite rebels. Dozens of journalists gathered in front of the general prosecutor office in the Yemeni capital, San'a, demanding the release of the Al-Shura weekly's editor Abdel Abdul Karim al-Khawinay, taken by police to jail earlier in the day. Undated photo shows Yemeni...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, June 21, 2007 - Two newspapers in Kathmandu have suspended publication this week in response to pressure, including death threats, from a Maoist party-affiliated trade union, the All-Nepal Communication, Press and Publications Trade Union. Nepalese journalists told the Committee to Protect Journalists that the trade union action appeared to be aimed at influencing coverage...

The body of an Iraqi newspaper editor kidnapped last week was found Sunday in Baghdad, police said. Gunmen ambushed Flayeh Wadi Mijthab, editor of the state-owned Al-Sabah newspaper, last Wednesday in eastern Baghdad as he was heading to work. His 25-year-old son and driver were left behind, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Mijthab's body was discovered Sunday near the Firdaws mosque in the al...

DUBAI (Reuters) - A Palestinian militant group holding BBC reporter Alan Johnston denied on Sunday any deal to free the man abducted in Gaza three months ago and said he would only be released if its demands were met. "Freeing this detainee has not been part of any deal with any faction or organisation. What appears on television screens and through the media here and there are untrue," a man...

(FNJ/IFEX) - Ambika Bhandari, editor of the "Samyentra Weekly", published in Biratchowk in Morang, a district in eastern Nepal, was threatened with death by Bikram Bhujel, owner of the "Don't Cross Me" restaurant on 11 June 2007. Bhandari was threatened regarding news published in the paper that same day. According to Shiva Bahadur Karki, president of FNJ's Morang chapter, Bhujel entered Bhandari...

Female journalists are increasingly being treated as soft targets by groups wanting to get their message of violence and control across. Two Afghan reporters and an Iraqi journalist who received numerous death threats for their work covering sectarian violence were killed last week, in a string of attacks against women journalists in conflict areas. Sahar Hussein Ali al-Haydari was brutally

Reporters Without Borders today condemned new media censorship in Yemen, where access to at least two websites has been blocked since the start of the year, in one case for three months, and the information ministry is now censoring the distribution of news to mobile phones by SMS message. “It is disturbing that the Yemeni government is attacking new technology in this way,” the press freedom...