A Moroccan independent daily has been closed down amid an escalating government campaign to silence critical journalists. On Tuesday, police prevented Taoufik Bouachrine, managing publisher and editor of the daily Akhbar al-Youm, and dozens of staff members from entering the offices of the Casablanca-based newspaper. The sudden move followed a statement from the Ministry of the Interior accusing...
Russian online journalist Aleksandr Podrabinek, 56, known for his sharp commentary on political and social issues, has gone into hiding after receiving a series of threats stemming from a September 21 commentary on the news website Yezhednevny Zhurnal that pointed out the human rights abuses of the Soviet government. Angered by Podrabinek’s piece, members of the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi (Ours...
Per Bjorklund, a Cairo-based Swedish freelance journalist and blogger who covered a recent wave of factory strikes in Egypt, was denied entry on returning to the country Tuesday and his passport was confiscated, apparently because his name appeared on a blacklist, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. As he arrived in Cairo on a flight from Prague, he is reportedly to be expelled on the...
US freelance journalist Joe Sharkey, who covered a 2006 plane crash in Brazil in which he was a passenger, is facing an onerous civil defamation suit for comments he said were wrongly attributed to him. On the third anniversary of the accident, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on Brazilian judicial authorities to dismiss the case, which is based on the tenuous claim that the comments...
Four days after a joint international press freedom mission to Belarus, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) on Tuesday called on the Belarusian government to stop obstructing the work of journalists working for foreign news media. The press freedom organisation has signed a statement issued by the mission at the end of its five-day visit noting that: “Accreditation of journalists working for Belarus...
A newspaper editor in police custody in Niger since Sunday was charged with criminal libel on Wednesday in connection with a story accusing a top official of involvement in a corruption scandal, according to local journalists and news reports. Ibrahim Soumana Gaoh of the private weekly Le Témoin was being held at the central prison in the capital Niamey pending trial on Tuesday, according to the...
Iranian judicial authorities are continuing to hold journalists employed by foreign news media including, Maziar Bahari, the correspondent of the US news magazine Newsweek, arrested exactly three months ago, and Fariba Pajooh, a stringer for Radio France Internationale and other media, who Tuesday began her second month in detention. Bahari has dual Canadian and Iranian citizenship. “The recent...
Four journalists were among more than 7,000 prisoners being released under an amnesty announced by Burma’s junta on Thursday last. “I am happy to be free and I am going to continue working as a journalist,” Eint Khaing Oo said as she was freed from Insein prison, near Rangoon under an amnesty announced by the military government. Three other journalists, Kyaw Kyaw Thant and Monywa Aung Shin, were...
Peru's Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) has maintained its arbitrary ban on Radio La Voz de Bagua, a station based in the country's northern Amazonas region, refusing on September 15 to allow it to resume broadcasting. The station has been stripped of its licence since June 6. Radio La Voz de Bagua was accused of inciting violence in June during an outbreak of protests and rioting by...
Press freedom groups have condemned the seizure of the print run of one of the few remaining independent newspapers in Kazakhstan, which is set to take control of a leading security and human rights organization. The country will become chair of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe in 2010. On Friday last, court officers in the financial capital Almaty confiscated the entire...
