There has been an upsurge in legal proceedings against members of the Algerian news media as the trial of three journalists on the daily Liberté ended with the state prosecutor making an outrageous call for jail sentences against them. The prosecutor on Sunday called for two months imprisonment for editor, Ali Ouafak, managing editor, Farid Alilat, and cartoonist Ali Dilem for “defamation” under...
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) wants to take a close look at a recent ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that allows criminal proceedings against journalists in libel cases, a move it claims "goes against major progress made in recent years in favor of free speech and press freedom." The Court decision, handed down on May 26, was in favour of (. . .) Argentine...
The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and the World Editors Forum (WEF) have condemned the UN Human Rights Council’s repeated efforts to undermine freedom of expression in the name of protecting religious sensibilities. “WAN reminds the UN that the Council’s proper role is to defend freedom of expression and not to support the censorship of opinion at the request of autocracies,” the WAN Board...
The daily Nezavissimaya Gazeta has been ordered to vacate offices it rents from the city of Moscow within one month, in a move seen by press freedom advocates as worrying for press freedom in Russia. The notice to quit is supposedly to allow for major works in the building, but the paper’s management is convinced the decision is linked to recent articles critical of a speech by the mayor, Yuri...
ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the May 27 decision of Russia's Constitutional Court to uphold the appeal of a former NGO leader against criminal charges which were widely believed to be excessive. Manana Aslamazyan, former director of the Educated Media Foundation, had been charged with smuggling after failing to declare an amount of money she brought into Russia in 2007 which slightly exceeded the legal...
Yet another Senegalese journalist has been sentenced on criminal defamation charges within a week. This journalist, according to Afrol News, was found guilty of "publishing false news." Papa Moussa Guèye, director of the private daily L'Exclusif, was handed a six-month suspended prison term by a court in the capital Dakar. His troubles began after his paper published an article on President...
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reiterated a call to Senegalese authorities to end a pattern of criminal defamation prosecutions against the press after a court in the capital, Dakar, sentenced a journalist on Tuesday to a suspended prison term on a charge of "publishing false news," according to news reports and his lawyer. Papa Moussa Guèye, director of the private daily L...
Salimzhan Gaisin, deputy editor-in-chief of the newspaper Saratovsky Reporter, has been found guilty of a crime under Article 129 of the Russian Criminal Code (for "Slander in the Mass Media"), according to the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES). In summer 2007, a group of residents in the village of Bulgakovka, located in the Voskresensk district of Saratov region, complained to...
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has hailed a new ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that urges Argentina to void a criminal defamation sentence against a local journalist and reform its defamation laws. The decision by the international court, based in San José, Costa Rica's capital, was made public on Tuesday by the Argentine human rights organisation Centro de...
Kosovan journalist Baton Haxhiu pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges of publishing the name of a protected witness during the war crimes trial of Kosovo's former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, according to a Reuters report. Prosecutors at the U.N. tribunal in The Hague had indicted the Kosovan journalist and had him arrested on Tuesday for contempt of court. He was the third Kosovo...
