State Persecution

Journalists are frequently being summoned for questioning by the Special Services of Kyrgyzstan, Adil Soz has reported. On December 5, the founder of the local Buran radio station, independent journalist Rakhmanzhan Islamov, was summoned for questioning at the Department of the State Committee for National Security (SCNS) in the city of Tokmok. The independent press agency 24.kg reported that...

The permanent secretary for information and publicity, George Charamba, and President Robert Mugabe's spokesperson have threatened to ban accredited foreign bureaus or local reporters working for foreign news organisations after accusing them of embarking on a propaganda assault on Zimbabwe, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) has reported. In an interview during the Zimbabwe...

Jordanian intelligence prevented Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), from entering Jordan on the night of December 15 and detained him for six hours at Amman's Alia airport before deporting him to Cairo. Gamal Eid was heading to Amman on his way back from Beirut after participating in the celebrations honouring Ibrahim Eissa, editor of the Al...

Pakistani businessman Munir Mengal, a member of the Balochi minority who was arrested for planning to launch a Balochi satellite TV station and detained by military intelligence (MI) and the police, was kept incommunicado for 16 months under the orders of then President Pervez Musharraf. Mengal made this revelation to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) during an interview in a European country where...

Journalist Habib Papy Boudendji, popularly known as Habib Bilalou, of satirical weekly Le Nganga, left hospital on December 10 after treatment for serious injuries from a brutal beating by soldiers within the presidential palace on December 5. In one of his articles, carried by Le Nganga on November 27, he pointed the finger at the head of state’s eldest daughter and director of the presidential...

A plenary session of the Damascus appeal court has refused to grant journalist and human rights activist Michel Kilo early release, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The judges on December 15 overturned an earlier ruling by the court in favour of Kilo’s release from Adra prison, in a Damascus suburb. Overturning a Damascus criminal court’s decision, the appeal court had ruled on...

Press freedom groups are calling for transparency in the investigation of two journalists arrested on bribery charges in northern Shanxi province. Shanxi public security officials told local journalists on Monday that Guan Jian, a reporter for Beijing-based weekly Wangluo Bao (Network News) who had been missing for 15 days, is in custody in neighbouring Hubei province on suspicion of accepting...

Press freedom groups have called for the release of Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi who has been arrested for throwing his shoes at George W Bush at a Baghdad press conference during a surprise visit by the US president on Sunday. “We obviously regret that the journalist used this method of protest against the politics of the American president," Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said...

The US military has refused to comply with the Iraqi central criminal court's order to release Reuters photographer Ibrahim Jassam. Maj Neal Fisher, a spokesman for detainee operations, said on December 10 that the US military was not bound by Iraqi court orders and would continue to hold Jassam on the grounds that he posed "a threat to Iraq security." Jassam was arrested at his home by US and...

Habib Papy Boubendji, an investigative journalist with Le Nganga, a satirical weekly in Gabon, was badly beaten by soldiers inside the presidential compound in Libreville on the night of December 5, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Boubendji, also known as Habib Bibalou, is now in intensive care in a military hospital near the capital where only his wife is allowed to visit him. "The...