State Persecution

Tunisia promotes itself as a progressive nation that protects human rights, but an investigation has found that it aggressively silences journalists and others who challenge the policies of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In a new report, 'The Smiling Oppressor', the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has found that journalists are subjected to routine imprisonment, assault, harassment, and

Four Azeri journalists have been held without charge for more than 10 days, possibly in Tehran's Evin prison, while an Azeri journalist and blogger was sentenced to six months in prison on September 20 for her online articles, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. "These Azeris join the list of ethnic minority journalists held in Iran's prisons for criticising social inequality and...

A Niamey appeals court has freed Radio France International (RFI) journalist Moussa Kaka after he had spent more than a year in jail accused of collaborating with Tuareg-led rebels. The court Tuesday ordered Kaka's release and downgraded the charges against him. He was arrested in September last year charged with colluding with rebels who have been waging a guerrilla war in Niger's uranium...

An Egyptian appeals court has upheld a guilty verdict against newspaper editor Ibrahim Eissa who wrote stories questioning president Hosni Mubarak's health. Eissa, editor of the independent daily Al-Dustour, was sentenced Sunday to two months imprisonment. Eissa was originally convicted in March and sentenced to six months on charges of reporting and publishing "false" information that questioned...

Leading Yemen journalist Abdel Karim al-Khaiwani has been released from prison shortly after President Ali Abdullah Saleh granted him amnesty and ordered cancellation of his six-year jail sentence that was handed to him earlier for conspiring with anti-government rebels. After leaving prison, al-Khaiwani told the News Yemen website that his release "is a victory for all Yemeni journalists and...

The Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) has defamed the city-state's two most powerful leaders, Singapore's High Court has ruled. The publisher and editor of the magazine, owned by Dow Jones & Co, are to pay damages to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father and former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, after defaming them in an article published in 2006, Reuters reported. The damages for the...

Ossayd Amarneh, a cameraman employed by Al-Aqsa TV, the mouthpiece of the Islamic party Hamas, was arrested in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on September 21, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). It is the fourth time Amarneh has been arrested in the past 12 months. The Palestinian Authority security services constant harass Al-Aqsa journalists in order to rein in Hamas’s propaganda and...

Australian federal police raided the house of a Canberra journalist Tuesday seeking to identify the source for a story quoting classified material from the top-secret Defence Intelligence Organisation, the Age has reported. Seven officers searched the home of Canberra Times national affairs correspondent Philip Dorling at 8.30 am. They took Dorling's laptop computer, the hard drive from a second...

A journalist has been arrested in Somaliland following a complaint by the Somali Red Crescent over a news report on SRC's food distribution that the journalist published on the Internet. In The journalist, Abdiqani Ismail Goh of Radio Las Anod, had cited residents protesting how the food was distributed. The arrest of the journalist on September 17 was ordered by head of Somaliland police division...

Burma's longest-serving political prisoner, journalist Win Tin, was freed Tuesday after 19 years in detention. He emerged from Yangon's Insein prison still dressed in light-blue prison clothes after benefiting from an amnesty announced by the military government for thousands of detainees ahead of the elections promised for 2010. "I will keep fighting until the emergence of democracy in this...