State Impunity

The Committee to Protect Journalists CPJ) has called for a full investigation into the killing of Ilyas Nizzar, who was found dead in Pidarak, in the volatile Balochistan province, in Pakistan's southwest, on January 5. Nizzar, a general assignment reporter with the Baloch-language magazine Darwanth, had been missing and assumed abducted since December 28. According to the Pakistan Federal Union...

Ogün Samast, the youth who is accused of fatally shooting Hrant Dink, the Armenian-Turkish editor of the weekly Agos, outside his office in Istanbul on January 19, 2007, could be released within 12 months as a result of the extremely slow pace at which his murder trial is proceeding, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Arrested on January 20, 2007 at a...

Freedom Forum has expressed concern over the treatment suffered by journalists in Sarlahi Sarlahi, Mid-Terai district, on January 2. Earlier in the day, sugarcane farmers had organised a protest across the East-West highway to demand a non-reduction in the minimum price of sugarcane over the previous year. The farmers had erected barriers on the highway to prevent entry of any vehicle during the...

Esdras Amado López, the editor of the Canal 36 news programme "Así se informa", reported that a member of the Honduran Armed Forces threatened to kill him on January 5, near the Honduran Institute for Social Security (Instituto Hondureño de Seguridad Social), just south of the capital Tegucigalpa, according to Comité por la Libre Expresión (C-Libre). In a phone interview with Radio Globo, López...

Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunga, a courageous, talented and iconoclastic journalist, was shot dead in Colombo by a death squad two years ago. His murder is still unpunished. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) saysit is appalled by the fact that the Sri Lankan government is doing nothing to solve this murder and in fact is clearly preventing the truth from

President Porfirio Lobo’s government has asked for the help of the United States, Colombia, and Spain to help investigate the killings of ten Honduran journalists who died in 2010, El Heraldo reports. According to EFE, Lobo asked the Security Ministry to “coordinate actions with international investigation agencies in friendly countries.” Last week, the Journalists’ Guild said that FBI agents were...

Honduran deputy security minister Armando Calidonio insisted during a TV appearance that none of the ten murders of journalists in the country during 2010 was connected to the victim’s work. “None of these murders is linked to the practice of journalism,” he said. “It is highly improbable and I say so sincerely.” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has described the...

Journalist José Luis Galdámez and his family deserve protection by Honduran authorities, according to an order from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, reported the Associated Press. Galdámez has a radio program in which he has openly supported ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Galdámez has received several death threats and in September hesurvived, unharmed, an armed attack in front of his...

Henry Suazo, Tegucigalpa-based radio HRN’s correspondent in La Ceiba, in the north-coast department of Atlántida, was gunned down as he left his home Tuesday morning, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) reported. His unidentified killers immediately left the scene. The motive is not yet known. Aged 39, Suazo also worked for Cablevisión del Atlántico, a local TV station...

Posters have appeared near the parliament building in central Athens listing journalists accused of being “thugs” and “rogues” for their perceived support for the government in the current crisis. Leaflets with the names and photos of some of the journalists were also scattered in the same area, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “In an already tense and...