State Impunity

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has welcomed the guilty verdict in the 2009 murder of Anastasiya Baburova, freelance reporter with the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, who was shot and killed in Moscow along with human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov. Markelov had represented Novaya Gazeta journalists in various legal cases. On Thursday, a jury at the...

Arnulfo Aguilar, the director of Radio Uno, an educational radio station based in San Pedro Sula, narrowly escaped an armed ambush outside his home on the outskirts of the city on the night of April 27 which he blames on the army. A station that supports the opposition National Front for Popular Resistance, Radio Uno has often been targeted by the security forces since the June 2009 coup d’état...

An independent daily newspaper critical of Zimbabwe’s president said Wednesday thieves raided its offices and stole computer hard drives and the editor’s laptop, the Associated Press has reported. Raphael Khumalo, chief executive at NewsDay said components and hard drives from 11 reporters’ computers were removed in the raid Monday night, along with the editor’s laptop used to write a weekly...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has deplored an attack on Pakistani journalist Naveed Kamal, of Metro One TV, who is in a coma after two motorcyclists shot him in the jaw as he was going home from work in Karachi on April 20. The attack was a shock and had put all journalists under pressure, said Pervaiz Shaukat, secretary-general of the Pakistan Federal Union of...

Explosives placed outside the building that houses FM 93 Radio Dilbar, a radio station in Charsadda (in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), were detonated in the early hours of Wednesday, damaging the two rooms, the studio and equipment. The station was able to resume broadcasting later Thursday, after a nine-hour break in service. “We are concerned by this attack’s method and how...

A 20-year statute of limitations will apply from this weekend to any criminal prosecution for the 1991 murders of El Espectador reporters Julio Daniel Chaparro and Jorge Enrique Torres, yet again highlighting the problem of impunity in Colombia. Chaparro and Torres were murdered on April 24, 1991 while investigating the impact of a 1988 paramilitary massacre in Segovia, in the northwestern...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has deplored Thailand Department of Special Investigation director-general Tharit Pengdit’s suggestion that the investigation into Japanese cameraman Hiroyuki Muramoto’s death could be "delegated" to his employer, the Reuters news agency. “By doing this, any witness to the crime might be daring enough to provide tip-offs to Reuters...

Côte d’Ivoire’s ambassador in Paris, Ally Coulibaly, has promised the family of vanished French-Canadian journalist Guy-André Kieffer that “the whole truth” will be told about his disappearance in Abidjan seven years ago. The diplomat received Kieffer’s wife Osange Silou-Kieffer and daughter Canelle, in Paris Wednesday — along with Aline Richard, president of the Association Vérité pour Guy-André...

Unidentified arsonists set fire to the home of Teresa Reyes and Radio Faluma Bimetu director Alfredo López at midnight on April 7, in the latest in a long list of attacks on the personnel and installations of this community radio station (known in Spanish as Radio Coco Dulce), based in Triunfo de la Cruz, in the Atlantic coast municipality of Tela, according to Paris-based press freedom group...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has lauded the investigation being conducted by the Karachi police into the murder of Geo News TV reporter Wali Khan Babar, who was gunned down on January 14, just minutes after submitting a report about two Karachi gangs. The police announced on April 7 that they arrested four suspects the previous day. “This is the first time in the...