State Control

Lebanon is planning a repressive technology bill that would restrict press freedom and free expression, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The bill focuses largely on electronic business transactions, including security and contractual issues. The legislation is seen as important among officials and business people who cite a need for Lebanon to adopt generally accepted...

The Tunisian Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday adopted a bill that reinforces an existing arsenal of legislation used to silence critical journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). President Ben Ali is expected to sign the bill after its anticipated approval by the Chamber of Councilors. The change is unconstitutional since it violates freedom of expression as guaranteed by...

The Zimbabwe Media Commission has decided to grant publishing licencs to The Daily News, the long-banned independent newspaper, and a handful of other publications, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Commission Chairman Godfrey Majonga announced on Wednesday that the licences would be issued immediately, marking the first time in nearly seven years that an independent daily...

The Bahraini government has decided to indefinitely suspend Al-Jazeera from reporting from the Gulf kingdom, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On Tuesday, Bahrain’s Ministry of Culture and Information decided to “temporarily freeze the activities of the Bahrain bureau of the Qatari satellite news channel Al-Jazeera for having violated professional norms and for failing to...

Five years ago, on May 13, 2005, Uzbek authorities fired on a crowd in Andijan, in the eastern Ferghana Valley and expelled journalists from the city to prevent them covering the atrocities taking place there. It will always be a black day in the history of human rights violations in Uzbekistan. Uzbek President Islam Karimov rightly continues to appear in the updated list of “Predators of Press...

The prosecutor-general in Kuwait has forbidden the Kuwaiti media to publish any more reports about the dismantling of an Iranian spy network, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The disbanding of the network, allegedly consisting of six Kuwaitis, two stateless Arabs employed by the army and various Arab citizens, was revealed by a media report on May 1. The spy ring dismantled by the...

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the two parties that control Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, have reached a “tacit strategic accord” to restrict the freedom of journalists as much as possible, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “Anything goes for the KDP and the PUK as far as muzzling the press is concerned,” RSF said. The security forces...

A sweeping new bill in Russia can return censorship rights to Russia’s KGB successor, the Federal Security Service, if passed, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Amendments to the country’s administrative code and the law on FSB activities would give the security agency the right to summon journalists for questioning and demand that editors remove articles that “aid extremists”...

The Kyrgyzstan provisional government’s Coordinating Council in the southern region of Osh introduced a new system of censorship on April 15, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). and reiterates its appeal to interim President Rosa Otunbayeva’s administration to keep its promises to respect the rule of law. The opposition to ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s government’s criticised its...

The Bahraini culture and information ministry has imposed a ban on using a chat application available on Blackberry mobile phones to share local news, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The ministry threatened to prosecute violators when it announced the ban on April 7. As a result of the prohibition, local journalist Muhannad Sulaiman has had to suspend his “Urgent News,” a daily...