Press freedom organisations have expressed outrage at the campaign being waged by the Afghanistan ministry of information and culture, the lower house of Parliament and the Council of Ulemas against privately-owned TV stations, especially Tolo TV, for broadcasting footage of men and women dancing together. The Council of Ulemas and the information and culture ministry announced on March 30 that...
The United Nations Human Rights Council is acting as a cover for Islamic and other countries aiming to restrict free speech. That's what free speech advocates have to say. The 47-nation council passed resolutions Friday imposing new instructions for its investigator on freedom of expression, free speech advocates say, bows too far to concerns about defamation of Islam, which have flared again with
A young Afghan journalist sentenced to death in northern Afghanistan on charges of blasphemy has been moved to Kabul ahead of an appeal due soon, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. A primary provincial court in the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif sentenced 23-year-old journalist Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh to death in January in a case that has attracted worldwide condemnation. He had no legal...
The six-month jail term handed down to leading Egyptian editor Ibrahim Eissa has come in for worldwide condemnation. The Boulak Abul Ela Court of Misdemeanor, on the outskirts of Cairo, sentenced Ibrahim Eissa, editor in chief of the independent daily Al-Dustour, to six months in prison for “publishing false information and rumors” about President Hosni Mubarak’s health. The court said the...
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) provided financial support for the publication Friday in N’Djamena of a “newspaper of newspapers,” a single issue combining most of the independent Chadian weeklies that have not appeared since a state of emergency was proclaimed on February 15. It calls for the repeal of a press law imposed by decree on February 20. “The independent N’Djamena-based press is showing...
A Moroccan court has fined the country's leading newspaper a whopping 6 million dirhams for mistakenly alleging that a judge had attended a gay wedding party in the Muslim country. Rachid Nini, editor of the daily Al-Massae said the paper would appeal the verdict and expressed concern that the authorities were using the courts to try and shut down a troublesome critic, according to Reuters. Last...
Leading Egyptian newspaper editor Ibrahim Eissa has been sentenced to six months in prison for "reporting" on President Hosni Mubarak's health problems. Eissa, editor of Al-Dustour, will post the 200 Egyptian pounds bail (US$40, €25) to avoid serving his sentence while he appeals. "The state has been put at risk," Judge Sherif Kamel Mustafa said in a Cairo court, while reading out the verdict...
The Rwandan government has launched an intensive hunt for the founder and editor of the private bi-monthly newspaper Umuco “for insulting the president”. The newspaper has already been suspended for a year and Managing Editor Bonaventure Bizumuremyi is now in hiding after he compared President Paul Kagame to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Local journalists said six police cars surrounded Bizumuremyi’s...
Leading Egyptian editor Ibrahim Eissa will Wednesday face charges of publishing "fake news about the president's health which afflicted the national economy." If convicted, Eissa faces up to three years in prison and a fine of as much as 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($3,600). This in the backdrop if the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemning the Egyptian government over raids and...
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has expressed serious concern over four Afghan journalists being held in detention. Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh, Ghows Zelmay, Jawed Ahmad and Ali Mohaqiq Nasab have been denied human rights including legal representation, the ability to receive visitors and access to time outdoors. Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh, 23, a journalism student and reporter for the
