State Impunity

NATO carried out airstrikes on the Tripoli headquarters of the state-owned national TV broadcaster Al-Jamahiriya and two of its installations on July 30. According to Al-Jamahiriya, three of its journalists were killed and 21 others were wounded in the airstrikes but this could not be immediately verified. The impossibility of immediate verification is yet another reminder of the difficulty of...

There has been an increase in threats and acts of intimidation against journalists in the southwestern port city of Karachi. Two TV reporters, Syed Shahryar Asim of Aaj TV and Malik Munawar of Channel 5, have been attacked in connection with their work in the past 10 days alone. “We urge the authorities to break the cycle of violence and impunity by investigating both of these cases thoroughly...

A savage attack was carried out July 29 on Gnanasundaram Kuhanathan, 59, the editor of the Tamil-language daily Uthayan, who was beaten by unidentified men with iron bars in the northern city of Jaffna. He was rushed to hospital, where he was in a critical condition with serious head injuries and still unconscious. “We demand a rapid and thorough investigation into this appalling crime,” Paris...

There has been a series of attacks, threats and demonstrations since mid-June targeting the Agence France-Presse bureau in Amman and its chief, Randa Habib, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The protests against AFP in Amman have taken a disturbing turn, with the demonstrators using threats and violence,” RSF said. “Intimidation attempts of this kind...

Two close associates of Syed Saleem Shahzad, an Islamabad-based investigative reporter for the Asia Times online newspaper whose dead body was found in Punjab province on 31 May, have given interviews to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) in which they accuse the authorities of showing little interest in investigating his murder. “We voice our support for Shahzad’s...

An Istanbul court for minors on July 25 passed a sentence of 22 years and 10 months in prison on Ogün Samast after convicting him of being the trigger-man in the January 2007 murder of Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink. Aged 17 at the time of the shooting, Samast was also ordered to pay to a fine of 600 Turkish lira (300 euros), Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières...

Many journalists have been the target of deliberate physical attacks in the past week as police officers and members of the security forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two main parties that form the government in Iraqi Kurdistan, looked on without intervening. In one incident, reporters were attacked by gunmen in civilian dress while covering a fire in a building near the...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned local TV reporter Adan Benítez’s murder in the northern port city of La Ceiba (the capital of Atlántida department) on July 4. Employed by two local stations, 45TV and Teleceiba Canal 7, he was the second journalist to be murdered in Honduras in the past two months. “Investigators should not rule out the possibility that...

French journalists Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier and their Afghan interpreter Reza, who were abducted by a Taliban group on December 29, 2009 in the northeastern province of Kapisa while doing a report for the French TV station France 3, were released June 29. Kapisa governor Abdol Hakim Akhonzadeh, who was reached in the town of Tagab, told Reporters Without Borders that the journalists...

Gunmen from pro- and anti-government militias raided and shuttered two radio stations in Somalia in separate attacks on Wednesday, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). An armed group with links to the hardline insurgency Al-Shabaab stormed the private Voice of Hiran on Wednesday morning in the central town of Beledweyne, ordering all staff to...