Ethics and Freedom

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern over the safety of a Cameroonian editor who is being prosecuted in connection with a leaked official document, according to local journalists and news reports. On February 24, a public prosecutor in Yaoundé charged Raphaël Nkamtchuen, editor of the periodical La Boussole, with "unauthorised communication with a detainee" and...

The Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) has condemned threats by the country's authorities to prosecute Sylvia Olayinka Blyden, publisher of Awareness Times, a privately-owned Freetown-based newspaper, with the antiquated criminal libel law. According to SLAJ, the use of the seditious criminal libel law is illegal and a threat to media freedom and free expression. The Media Foundation...

Turkish journalist Ahmet Topcu has been sentenced to eleven months in prison in connection with his criticism of a mayor. In June 2010, Halil Bakirci, mayor of Rize (eastern Black Sea coast) and a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), had proposed that "Kurds should have co-wives" in order to solve the Kurdish question. The mayor was broadly criticised for his suggestion and...

There has been a wave of searches and arrests of investigative journalists in Istanbul and Ankara in connection with a probe into an alleged anti-government plot. Journalists who have helped to shed light on this case are being made to pay for the tension between the government and the secularist and ultra-nationalist opposition, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...

José Cadena, owner of the weekly El Vocero in the Amazonian province of Sucumbíos, in northeastern Ecuador, is facing a lawsuit filed before the Prosecutor's Office by the local prefect, Orlando Grefa, who has accused the newspaper of damaging his image and his honour after it published allegations made against him by Vice-Prefect Oswaldo Calvopiña. Cadena told Fundamedios that the lawsuit was...

Mir Hossein Mousavi, owner of the suspended newspaper Kalameh Sabaz, his wife, author Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karoubi, owner of the suspended Etemad Melli, and his wife have been arrested in Iran, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, the Tehran public prosecutor, told a press conference on February 27 that the two newspaper...

ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the decriminalisation of defamation in Mexico's Puebla state, following the adoption of reforms to the local Criminal Code. At the same time, the recent reform could be further improved by introducing a civil defamation regulation adjusted to international standards including the presence of actual malice and ensure that those sued for defamation are able to mount a proper...

There are many shortcomings in the recent amendments to the Criminal Code of Kazakhstan related to defamation and insult. The Kazakh authorities have failed to fulfill their pledges to improve the legal framework for media and protect the right to freedom of expression as made prior and during its chairmanship of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), according to ARTICLE...

ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the High Court decision Thursday to dismiss the defamation claim brought by the Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash against the Kyiv Post, an independent Ukrainian newspaper. Firtash complained about an article published in the Kyiv Post in which the outcome of an international arbitrage concerning a dispute between RosUKrEnergo, of which Firtash is a major shareholder...

Some local courts in Brazil are permitting the use of multiple lawsuits and other abusive judicial procedures to censor journalists, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Carlos Santos, a freelance journalist and blogger based in Mossoró, a town in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, was ordered this month to pay 6,000 reais (2,600 euros) to...