State Impunity

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Kazakh authorities to thoroughly investigate journalism as a motive in the murder of Kyrgyz journalist Gennady Pavlyuk. Pavlyuk, better known by his pen name, Ibragim Rustambek, died in the hospital on December 22, 2009, after having been thrown from an upper-story window of an apartment building in Kazakhstan...

Manila police must thoroughly investigate the murder of radio anchor Maria Len Fores Somera, who was shot Thursday near her home in Malabon City, a suburb of Manila. An unidentified man shot Somera, a DZME station host, in the back of the head before fleeing in a Jeep, according to the Associated Press. Some local news reports said there were two assailants. Somera, a 44-year-old mother of three...

Two Kurdish opposition journalists have escaped murder attempts in the past three days in Erbil and Dohuk, places controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, while other journalists have been briefly detained or have been the target of a kidnap attempt. Many report that they are continuing to receive death threats by SMS, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières...

The findings from the official investigation into Japanese cameraman Hiro Muramoto’s death during clashes between government forces and anti-government “Red Shirts” in Bangkok on April 10, 2010 are being seen as “utterly unsatisfactory.” The provisional conclusion one year after the event that the security forces did not fire the shot that killed Muramoto, who worked for Reuters, betrays a...

There has been an alarming increase in threats and violence against journalists in Honduras. There have been seven cases in the space of 10 days and all the media involved are ones that spoke out against the June 2009 coup d’état, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The first in the latest spate of cases was the March 13 shooting of Franklin Meléndez, the...

The Aguilas Negras (Black Eagles) paramilitary group has been threatening journalists, civil society figures and NGOs, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Dated March 14 and sent from a Gmail account in the name of “fenixaguilasnegras,” a message obtained by RSF promises the “extermination” and “purge” of a wide range of organisations, including women’s...

Thirteen journalists killed in the past 13 months. The world’s deadliest country for media personnel in 2010, with 11 killed, Pakistan continues to be one of the most dangerous in 2011. As well as being very badly paid, its journalists are exposed to every kind of danger. With its tribal northwest, its border with Afghanistan, its tension with India and its chaotic political history, Pakistan is...

La Voz de Zacate Grande, a community radio station based on the southern island of Zacate Grande, has again been the target of persecution for siding with local peasant groups in their land disputes with biofuel manufacturer Miguel Facussé Barjum, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). In the latest aggression, Franklin Meléndez, the president of the board...

Dunya News TV cameraman Fayyaz was shot in the back Monday while covering a meeting of the Punjab provincial assembly in Lahore. It was unclear who fired the shot but fellow journalists said they thought it was a targeted attack linked to his coverage of criticism of an important local party called Nawaz, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Fayyaz was...

A correspondent for the Lebanese New TV television station, Ibrahim Dsoki, has received death threats and insults directed at him personally, as well as at his family and work colleagues, from student union members and supporters of the Amal movement (a Lebanese Shi'a political movement founded by Musa al-Sadr). The threats arrived via Dsoki's private email account and on the website of the...