Ethics and Freedom

An appeal court has upheld the decision of a Tashkent court to fine Uzbekistan’s few remaining independent reporters, Abdulmalik Boboyev 10,000 dollars. The fine is 400 times what he earns every month as Voice of America correspondent, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Boboyev is entirely innocent of the charges on which he was convicted – defaming and...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the Singapore High Court's sentencing of British author Alan Shadrake to prison over his book criticizing the nation's judiciary. The court Tuesday sentenced Shadrake, 76, to six weeks in prison, and fined him 20,000 Singapore dollars (US$15,400) for contempt of court, according to international news reports. He was convicted on November 3...

Azerbaijan’s supreme court Thursday partially complied with a European Court of Human Rights ruling from last April by quashing jailed newspaper editor Eynulla Fatullayev’s 2007 convictions on charges of terrorism and inciting hatred, thereby recognising that his rights were violated. But it upheld a third 2007 conviction on a charge of tax evasion and a July 2010 conviction on a charge of...

Zimbabwean police have issued an arrest warrant issued last week against exiled editor Wilf Mbanga concerning a 2008 story about the murder of an election official, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Zimbabwe Republic Police Chief Superintendent Andrew Phiri told CPJ on Wednesday that Mbanga, publisher of the The Zimbabwean newspaper, which is edited in London...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and Journalist in Danger (JED) have written to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) justice and human rights minister Luzolo Bambi Lessa about two separate cases on November 2 in which journalists were given jail sentences in absentia on defamation charges. The two organizations said they did not oppose the fact that defamation actions...

A court in the Moscow suburb of Khimki on Wednesday convicted Mikhail Beketov, the editor of the independent newspaper Khimkinskaya Pravda, of criminally slandering Khimki's mayor, Vladimir Strelchenko, in a 2007 television interview. Beketov, who is in a wheelchair and unable to speak two years after a near-lethal attack, was wheeled into the courtroom for the verdict. Judge Arkady Khalatov...

Héctor Camero, a representative of Radio Tierra y Libertad, a community radio station based in a poor neighbourhood of Monterrey (in the northeastern state of Nuevo León), was told on November 3 that he has been sentenced to two years in prison and a fine of 15,000 pesos (900 euros) on a charge of “using, developing and exploiting radio frequencies without a licence.” The sentence deals another...

Burma must immediately release Toru Yamaji, a reporter with Tokyo-based APF news agency, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) hasdemanded. Yamaji, 49, was detained Sunday in Myawaddy, on the country's eastern border with Thailand while trying to cover the country's first elections in two decades, according to international media reports, which quoted Japan's embassy in Rangoon...

A bill was adopted by the Bulgarian cabinet on October 20 that would amend the criminal code section dealing with “crimes against the national and racial equality” of the country’s citizens. Prompted by Council of Europe recommendations, it would increase the penalties for discriminatory statements in the media to four years in prison and a fine of 5,000 to 19,000 levas (2,000 to 5,000 euros)...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has urged the Radio and TV Supreme Council (RTÜK) in Turkey to drop the prosecution it has brought against Kanal D, a privately-owned TV station critical of the government, for broadcasting the reactions of the families of ten soldiers who were killed in an ambush by members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The station...