State Control

Reporters Without Borders is appalled by the death of a Japanese news photographer on the streets of Rangoon this morning. Kenji Nagai, fifty years old, worked for the photoagency APF. He has been in Burma for two days. Another foreign journalist was reportedly injured. The press casualties came after the security forces opened fire on demonstrators near the Tarder Hotel in the centre of Rangoon...

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association are outraged by the measures adopted by the military junta to prevent journalists and activists covering the on-going crackdown on protests. Most of the country’s mobile phone lines have been cut and the Internet network has been drastically reduced. Charges by police and troops on demonstrators in Rangoon, especially near the Shwedagon...

At a demonstration close to the Burmese embassy in Paris on 27 September 2007, Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association launched an appeal to the UN Security Council to stop the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations within the country. The actor Jane Birkin also joined the rally to condemn the brutal policies of the Burmese regime towards the democracy movement and the...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), regional group of the International Federation of Journalists, today condemned the adoption by the Portuguese Parliament of a law that strips journalists of their right to protect their confidential sources and to be fairly paid for the use of their work. "We are flabbergasted by Portuguese lawmakers' lack of consideration for the...

There have been 24 serious violations of the freedom to report news and information against Burmese journalists trying to cover protests that began a month ago. The use of violence and censorship against journalists is a “detestable strategy” aimed at preventing them from doing their job, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and the Burma Media Association have said. This strategy has been accompanied...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has condemned the treatment meted out to two British journalists, Andrew Carter and Aidan Hartley, and their Chinese fixer Dean Peng, working for the investigative programme "Unreported World" on British TV's Channel 4. The two were investigating the fate of petitioners held by the authorities in a western district of the capital, when they were assaulted by...

The Burmese junta has cut off the mobile phones of prominent pro-democracy supporters and of some journalists representing foreign media, including two from Agence France-Presse, the news agency has reported. The management of AFP has requested that the authorities in Burma (Myanmar) restore mobile phone service to its reporters so that they can carry out their work. Burma's military government...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) welcomes the release of Li Yuanlong, a reporter for Bijie Ribao daily newspaper in Guizhou province. Yualong is the second journalist this week to complete a jail sentence imposed by the Chinese authorities and to be released on the promised date. Yuanlong was first detained in September 2005. He was tried on May 11, 2006, for charges of “inciting...

The arrest of two Agence France-Presse reporters on September 12th is the latest in a string of cases of foreign journalists being obstructed in their work. They show that the less stringent regulations introduced in January are being applied erratically and only when less sensitive issues are involved. At least 32 foreign journalists have been detained or prevented by police from doing reports...

China has adopted an emergency response law that bans the spread of false information, but also requires timely information from the government about major accidents, health threats and disasters. The law outlines punishments for media outlets that spread false information about disasters — a move that press freedom organisaitons say is designed to muzzle reporters. Relative of a miner who is...