The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern at an Indonesian Supreme Court ruling against Erwin Arnada, editor of the now-dormant Playboy Indonesia. Arnada faces up to two years in jail after prosecutors said recently that they would enforce a 2009 Supreme Court ruling that found the magazine's editor guilty of public indecency, according to news reports. Defence attorneys...
A prominent opposition journalist is to go on trial for allegedly libelling Egypt's foreign minister in a newspaper, a judicial source said on Sunday. Hamdi Qandeel could face prison or a fine if found guilty of the charge of "insulting and libelling a public servant or citizen performing their work," the source said. Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit filed a complaint against Qandeel alleging...
A man said to be a close ally of President Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia has filed a lawsuit in the United States of America against the US-based online Freedom Newspaper, its editor Pa Nderry M'Bai, and Freedom Newspaper Incorporated, the publishers. Amadou Samba, a businessman and the publisher of pro-government Banjul-based Daily Observer newspaper, is demanding that Freedom Newspaper make public...
Togo's President, Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé, has filed three more defamation suits against two privately-owned newspapers. Two of the suits were brought against the weekly L'Indépendant Express. This brings to three the number of cases that President Gnassingbé has launched against L'Indépendant Express since August 18. The Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) correspondent in Togo reported...
Two resident district commissioners (RDC) arrested Red Pepper Publications Ltd photojournalist Tony Kizito over the alleged publication of a defamatory story by Kamunye newspaper, a vernacular sister paper of Red Pepper, Kampala-based Human Rights Network for Journalists(HRNJ) has reported. Kizito, 28, was arrested on August 30. He was on his way to the Mukono town council when he was intercepted...
Journalist AS Mani has been release on bail on an order that his lawyer managed to obtain from a Tamil Nadu appeal court on Thursday last. The publisher and editor of the Chennai-based magazine Naveena Netrikkan, Mani will however have to remain for the next month in Chidambaram, which is 250 km from Chennai. Arrested on the orders of Police Commissioner SR Jangid on July 19 after publishing an...
Africa’s leading press freedom advocates met in Kenya this week to support the Declaration of Table Mountain, a freedom of expression campaign organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) to repeal criminal defamation and insult laws across the continent. The inaugural meeting of the campaign’s steering committee, held in Nairobi on September 1 and 2 , brought...
China’s colossal Sanmenxia dam has a new victim – Xie Chaoping, a journalist who was arrested without a warrant in the northeastern city of Weinan on August 19 after writing a book about the fate of those displaced by the dam. He is now reportedly being held by the Public Security Department in Beijing. Much has been written about this dam, a major source of environmental damage and human...
Russian police, some armed and masked, raided a prominent opposition magazine on Thursday as part of an unspecified investigation. The three-hour raid on the New Times, an independent Moscow-based weekly, was carried out by armed and masked police officers led by Col Stanislav Pashkovsky, the head of the General Directorate of Internal Affairs (GUVD) for the Moscow region, who wanted to identify...
Kurdish publications have again been suspended or seized under the Anti-Terrorism Law (Law 3713), which allows the Turkish courts to impose harsh penalties on journalists and media when they allude to Kurdish armed separatists and fosters a repressive climate for the Kurdish media. Although the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly condemned Turkey because of the Anti-Terrorism Law, the...
