State Persecution

The Reuters news agency says Syrian authorities have freed one of its photographers after holding him for six days. Reuters said the 50-year-old Khaled al-Hariri was freed Sunday and told colleagues that he was well. Al-Hariri was one of four Reuters journalists held over the last week in Syria. The other three have already been released and ordered to leave the country. A fifth Reuters journalist...

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called called on Kazakh authorities to immediately investigate the whereabouts of Daniyar Moldashev, director of ADP Ltd, publisher of the independent Almaty newspaper Respublika. Colleagues said Thursday that Moldashev had disappeared, days after being assaulted and shortly before the country's presidential election....

Using a vague criminal code provision allowing authorities to detain individuals deemed a threat to public order, a provincial governor in Cameroon threw a journalist in prison on Wednesday last for inquiring about the arrests of two employees of a state-run palm oil company, according to local journalists. In a statement, the local press union Network of Journalists of The North said Adamawa Gov...

Hamas security forces assaulted and obstructed journalists trying to cover protests in Gaza on Wednesday last, according to news reports and CPJ interviews. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the assaults and called on the authorities in Gaza to end the harassment of journalists reporting from demonstrations. Police attacked at least five journalists while they were covering several...

Murtadha Al-Shahtur, the police spokesman in the governorate Dhi Qar who also writes as a journalist for the local newspaper Al-Zaman and other newspapers and websites, was arrested in the provincial capital of Nasariyah (370 km southeast of Baghdad) on April 3 by the central government’s special security forces, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “This...

Amangelen Shapudakov, an 80-year-old activist, has been confined to a psychiatric hospital after accusing a local government official of corruption in an interview for Radio Azatlyq, the Turkmen-language service of Radio Free Europe (RFE), one of the few independent media still operating in Turkmenistan. “The inhuman and arbitrary way that Shapudakov is being treated is new evidence of this...

As pro-democracy protests gain pace in Azerbaijan, the regime is cracking down harder on journalists in a desperate attempt to assert its control over news and information. The authorities at first concentrated on imposing a news blackout by preventing journalists from covering demonstrations and criminalizing Facebook users. But in a new escalation, opposition journalists are now being abducted...

Dana Bakir, a cameraman working for Iraq's Naliya Radio and Television (NRT), has been missing since April 1, when security forces attacked journalists who were covering a demonstration in Freedom Square (Saray Azadi) in Sulaymaniyah. NRT director-general Twana Othman said he regarded his cameraman’s disappearance as a case of abduction. Othman told Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on Sri Lankan authorities to immediately release LankaeNews editor Benette Rupasinghe, who was Thursday arrested by the Colombo police for allegedly threatening another man. Aged 68 and a diabetes patient, Rupasinghe is currently being held in the infirmary of Colombo prison. The press freedom organisation condemned the way...

A warrant was issued for the arrest of Mahmudur Rahman, the editor of the opposition daily Amar Desh, on March 29, just two weeks after he was released from prison. He is accused of libelling senior Awami League officials in the southern town of Kotalipara. The Awami League has governed Bangladesh since 2008. Rahman is to be tried next month. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...