Corruption and Crime

A nearly fatal shooting attack was carried out Wednesday on blogger Ricardo Gama on a Rio de Janeiro street was linked to his blog, which is often very scathing about the local authorities. The police said they were not ruling it out, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Gama, 40, was in the Rio neighbourhood of Copacabana when individuals in a black car...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed dismay at a provincial court's decision in Indonesia to acquit three accused killers of TV journalist Ridwan Salamun. On Wednesday, a panel of judges in the Tual District Court in Maluku declared the three men not guilty of the reduced charge of "persecution" in the mob violence in which Salamun was killed while covering a community clash in...

There have been mixed feelings about the guilty verdicts and sentences ranging from 4 to 30 years in prison that a court in San Salvador passed Wednesdat on 11 of the 31 people, mainly gang members, who were tried for the September 2009 murder of Franco-Spanish documentary filmmaker and journalist Christian Poveda. “The sequence of events and the immediate motive seem clear but was a two-day trial...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the attack on the Peruvian news daily Voces, which was hit with homemade explosive devices on Saturday. The daily's editor recently received threats following critical reporting on a national congressional candidate, he told CPJ. According to CPJ interviews and local press freedom groups, around 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, three unknown assailants on...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned Wednesday’s decision by a court in Tual, in the eastern province of Maluku, to acquit three men of the murder of Sun TV cameraman Ridwan Salamun, who was killed on August 21, 2010 while covering a clash between the inhabitants of neighbouring villages. The press freedom organisation called for a judicial review of the...

Daily Post publisher Marc Neil-Jones was brutally attacked in Port Vila, the capital of the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, on Friday last, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Neil-Jones accuses infrastructure and public utilities minister Harry Iauko of organising and participating in the assault, which was took place in the journalist’s office...

Deaths tied to drug violence and grave human rights violations have increased significantly since President Felipe Calderón deployed the military in 2007 to combat Mexico's drug cartels, says Human Rights Watch. An estimated 35,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence during the Calderón administration, including more than 15,000 in 2010. Mexico's National Human Rights Commission has...

The stabbing of Banjir Ambarita, a freelance reporter who frequently contributes to Indonesia's English-language daily the Jakarta Globe, appears to be related to his reporting linking police to a prisoner sex abuse scandal, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. According to Globe staff and news reports, Banjir was stabbed in the chest and stomach by...

Freedom Forum has expressed concern over the growing incidence of press freedom violations across the country. Freedom Forum's attention has recently been drawn towards an incident that occurred in Bajura, a district in the far-western region of the country, on March 1. Chief of the District Sports Committee, Nrip Singh Baduwal, leveled a death threat against journalist Prakash Singh, accusing him...

Armed individuals intercepted Oswald Alonso Navarro, a correspondent for the international news agency the Associated Press (AP), and Marco Antonio Vallejo Estrada, a publicist for the Radio Fórmula radio station, on February 25 as they were driving on a street in Cuernavaca, in the central Mexican state of Morelos, according to ARTICLE 19 and Centro Nacional de Comunicación Social (CENCOS). The...