State Impunity

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) is worried about the dangers for Haitian and foreign journalists from the rioting that has shaken the country since the widely disputed results of the general elections were announced on December 7. Although the media have so far been largely spared, RSF urge the supporters of the various parties and alliances to refrain from turning...

The Ukrainian attorney-general’s office announced Tuesday that the investigation into the role that Gen Oleksiy Pukach, a former intelligence officer, played in the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze in September 2000 in Kiev has been completed and that the case is being set to trial. Significantly, the statement added that investigators had not succeeded in building a case against any other...

Ecuadoran authorities must fully investigate a vicious attack Tuesday against Ecuadoran sports reporter Guido Manolo Campaña, who was abducted, beaten, and threatened while on assignment in the northern coastal province of Esmeraldas, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged. Two gunmen seized Campaña, a reporter for the Guayaquil-based daily El Universo, from a bus that was en route...

Pakistani journalist Mehmood Chandio, president of the Mirpurkhas press club and bureau chief for the Sindhi-language television Awaz, was gunned down on Sunday, according to delayed reports received by the new York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Assailants knocked on the door of Chandio's home, firing two or three times when he answered, Mazhar Abbas, a former head of the Pakistan...

Belarusian prosecutors have closed their investigation into the September death of Aleh Byabenin, founder and director of the Minsk-based, pro-opposition news website Charter 97. Authorities said Wednesday that they did not find evidence of foul play, according to New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Byabenin's brother found the journalist hanged in a stairway of his summer house...

Nepalese journalist Shreedeep Rayamajhi is being subjected to violent attacks and continuing threats in connection with his online reporting, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Rayamajhi told CPJ that he began receiving threatening emails from an unknown sender in June, warning him to stop writing and to erase his profile from online news outlets. The email's...

The Post newspaper’s assistant news editor George Chellah was threatened by a group of political party supporters while attending a United Party for National Development (UPND) press conference on November 24 in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, he told IPI by phone today. According to Chellah, he was personally invited to the UPND press conference by a member of the party's leadership. Once he arrived...

The body of Pakistani journalist Abdul Hameed Hayatan, 25, was found on November 18 near the Sami river in Turbat, in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, according to media reports. Hayatan, who wrote for a number of print dailies, was abducted along with a friend on October 25, while on his way home from a wedding in the city of Gawadar. His friends and family reportedly believed that Pakistani...

The body of Abdul Hameed Hayatan, a young Baloch journalist who was abducted in the southwestern port city of Gwadar on October 25, was found beside the River Sami in Turbat, 40 km to the east, on November 18. His reporting critical of the Pakistani authorities and his support for the Baloch national movement were almost certainly the motive for his abduction and murder. “If the local and federal...

Russian and Belgian police are currently searching in the Belgian city of Liège for a man suspecting of being the hitman in the murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow in October 2006. This was confirmed during the weekend by Belgian officials, who – like their Russian counterparts – did not name him. He is also reportedly being sought in his own region in Russia. Sources...