State Control

There has been a disturbing escalation in the Guinean military’s clampdown, consisting of denying entry to French TV crews and reporters on their arrival at Conakry international airport, Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. It coincides with continuing serious threats to local reporters and Sundays arrival of United Nations assistant secretary-general Haile Menkerios in...

Iranian authorities decided to revoke the licences of three reformist newspapers on Sunday and Monday, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. The Press Supervisory Board revoked the licences of the Tehran-based dailies Farhang-e Aashti and Arman on Sunday, according to local and international news reports. On Monday, the same state agency’s offices in Fars province...

Three Voice of America (VOA) reporters in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland in northeastern Somalia were suspended Thursday, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Puntland’s Deputy Minister of Information Abdishakur Mire Adan issued a letter suspending all three VOA correspondents and any other VOA journalist from reporting in the region. The suspended VOA...

Sudan has decided to lift prior censorship on the written press. Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), however, called for this announcement to be followed by real change and accompanied by further steps allowing greater press freedom in Sudan. President Omar al-Bashir on September 27 put an end by decree to censorship of all publications before printing that has been carried out by the...

Turning its words into actions, the Honduran government Tuesday followed up its decree suspending civil liberties by closing Radio Globo and Canal 36 television, two Tegucigalpa-based stations that had already been assaulted and suspended several times in the past three months for their opposition to the June 28 coup d’état. In both cases, the police evicted staff and confiscated all the equipment...

Honduran officials, acting under a new decree that suspends civil liberties, shut down Radio Globo and Canal 36 television early Monday, the Committee to Protect Journalists has said quoting news reports.. “Honduran citizens have the right to be fully informed about what’s going on in the country at this very sensitive moment,” said Carlos Lauría, CPJ Americas senior programme coordinator. “We...

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...

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...

Eritrea now has at least 30 journalists and two media workers behind bars, which means that, exactly eight years after the round-ups of September 18, 2001 that put an end to free expression, it has achieved parity with China and Iran in terms of the number of journalists detained. The three most important waves of arrests of the past eight years were in September 2001, November 2006 and February

As Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi held six days of lavish parties, plays, concerts and exhibitions to celebrate the bloodless coup that brought him to power on September 1, 1969, it was unlikely his international guests would have asked about Libya's abysmal press freedom record and all the journalists who have been disappeared, tortured or killed in the past 40 years. Libyans who are critical of