State Impunity

Pakistani authorities must not allow Thursday's shooting death of veteran Pakistani reporter Raja Assad Hameed in Rawalpindi go uninvestigated and unprosecuted, the Committee to Protect Journalists has demanded. Hameed, who worked for local broadcaster Waqt TV and the English-language daily the Nation, and appeared regularly on Al-Jazeera broadcasts, was shot several times at close range outside...

The already murderous conditions for the press in Sri Lanka and Pakistan deteriorated further in the past year, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has found in its newly updated Impunity Index, a list of countries where journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes. Colombia, historically one of the world’s deadliest nations for the press, improved as the rate

Ecuadoran journalist Emilio Palacio has told local reporters that he had received threats against himself and his family following a March 1 article criticising President Rafael Correa's weekly radio address. According to reports in the Ecuadoran press, Palacio, editor of the Guayaquil-based daily El Universo, said he has received multiple death threats via e-mail since late 2008. The journalist...

On February13, 2009, Venezuelan authorities arrested Rafael Segundo Pérez, a former sergeant for the Carabobo police, in connection to the January 16 killing of journalist Orel Sambrano, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local news reports. Pérez is accused of working as a hired assassin and conspiring to commit a crime. Police Commissioner Robinson Castillo told...

A grenade attack was carried out on the headquarters of the Tamil daily newspaper Uthayan in the northern Sri Lankan city of Jaffna at about 11 p.m. Monday night. The grenade exploded in the patio of the building, causing considerable damage and injuring a police guard. “This was yet another attempt to stop distribution of Uthayan and comes less than a month after the arrest of N Vithyatharan, the...

Jawed Ahmad, an Afghan journalist who worked for Canadian media, including the broadcaster CTV News, was gunned down on March 10 by two men in a vehicle as he was getting out of his own car in the centre of the southern city of Kandahar, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Ahmad, also known as Jojo Yazemi, died on the spot. His body was taken to a nearby hospital where members of his...

Serbian authorities must step up their investigation into the killing of journalist and publisher Slavko Ćuruvija, the International Press Institute and its affiliate, the South East Europe Media Organisation, said Wednesday, one month before the 10th anniversary of his death. Slavko Ćuruvija was shot dead by two masked men in front of his home in the centre of Belgrade on April 11, 1999, Serbian...

The International Press Institute (IPI) has expressed concern about the pressure placed on news organisations by the weak rule of law and the perceived lack of judicial independence in Bangladesh. An IPI high-level mission, including the IPI director David Dadge, travelled to Bangladesh in late 2008 to meet top media and political figures. The mission found that impunity in the crimes against...

The Russian prosecutor-general’s office has filed an appeal before the supreme court against the acquittal of three men who were accused in connection with the 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya. A jury found the three men not guilty on February 19 at the end of a trial before a Moscow military court. “We point out that the Politkovskaya murder has not been solved,” Reporters...

An unidentified attacker stabbed a reporter outside his newsroom in Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek, Tuesday, according to the regional news site Ferghana. Syrgak Abdyldayev, a political reporter and commentator with the independent newspaper Reporter-Bishkek, was attacked at around 7 p.m., Ferghana reported. Abdyldayev, 47, is currently hospitalised with 12 stab wounds and a broken arm, Reporter...