Corruption and Crime

Several copies of the weekly Le Nouveau Réveil newspaper were seized on March 4 from the newsstands and destroyed by two unidentified persons in Cocody and Yopougon, two suburbs of Abidjan, capital of Côte d'Ivoire, according to the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA). MFWA's correspondent reported that the publishers of Le Nouveau Réveil have since lodged a formal complaint to the Ivorian...

An unidentified attacker stabbed a reporter outside his newsroom in Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek, Tuesday, according to the regional news site Ferghana. Syrgak Abdyldayev, a political reporter and commentator with the independent newspaper Reporter-Bishkek, was attacked at around 7 p.m., Ferghana reported. Abdyldayev, 47, is currently hospitalised with 12 stab wounds and a broken arm, Reporter...

An unidentified attacker stabbed a reporter outside his newsroom in Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek, on March 3, according to the regional news site Ferghana. Syrgak Abdyldayev, a political reporter and commentator with the independent newspaper Reporter-Bishkek, was attacked at around 7 p.m., Ferghana reported. Abdyldayev, 47, is currently hospitalised with 12 stab wounds and a broken arm, Reporter...

Mexican radio reporter Luis Daniel Méndez Hernández’s was murdered on February 23 while he was attending the carnival in Huayacocotla, in the southeastern state of Veracruz. The correspondent of “Enlaces Noticias,” a news programme broadcast on several frequencies by the Radiorama Tuxpan news agency, Méndez was shot four times in the back, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “There are...

Progress has been made in the investigation into last month’s murder of Venezuelan journalist Orel Zambrano, the editor of the political weekly ABC, in Valencia, in the central state of Carabobo. One of the two suspected killers, former Carabobo state policeman Rafael Segundo Pérez, was arrested on February 17, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Zambrano, 62, was gunned down at around 3...

Ernesto Rollin, a presenter on local radio DxSY-AM in Ozamiz City, in Misamis Occidental province (on the southern island of Mindanao) was killed on February 23. He was the first journalist to be killed this year in the Philippines, but the 99th since the return to democracy in 1986. Aged about 40, Rollin was gunned down at close range at about 5:30 a.m. in a service station in nearby Oroquieta...

An independent female journalist probing a child sexual abuse case was recently harassed and assaulted by youths in the Mexican city of Oaxaca, according to delayed reports. On January 29, a group of five or six youths harassed and assaulted independent journalist Verónica Villalvazo, who works under the pseudonym of "Frida Guerrera". At the time of the incident, Villalvazo was walking near the...

Several journalists of the Reporter, an independent monthly magazine in Burkina Faso, as well as journalist Newton Ahmed Barry of privately-owned weekly newspaper l'Événement have received death threats via e-mail for allegedly criticising three top government officials. In a February 2009 edition of the Reporter, the magazine published a letter from an anonymous source that identified himself as...

A judge in the Philippines has lifted the warrant of arrest he himself had issued against the alleged killers of radio broadcaster Dennis Cuesta. Judge Isaac Alvero Moran, of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 36, of General Santos City, on February 12 revoked the February 3 warrant of arrest issued against Police Inspector Redempto "Boy" Acharon and several other suspects in the killing of...

Press freedom groups in Paraguay have condemned the death threat and assault against Aldo Lezcano, a correspondent for the daily ABC Color in Ybycuí, as well as the assault suffered earlier by Richard Villasboa and Blas Salcedo, of the Canal 13 television station. The Sindicato de Periodistas del Paraguay (SPP) has called on authorities to investigate these incidents and punish those found to be...