State Persecution

A judge in Niger ordered the conditional release of a reporter for Radio France International (RFI) on Monday, but he stayed in jail because the public prosecutor lodged an appeal, a judicial source and RFI said, according to Reuters. Moussa Kaka, director of a private radio station and correspondent for French state-owned RFI, will stay in jail until an appeal court rules on his case. Kaka was...

An Azerbaijani journalist who has been honored by Amnesty International says authorities have prevented him from taking a flight out of the country, according to Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Aqil Xalil, a 25-year-old correspondent with Azadliq, Azerbaijan's largest opposition daily, was shortlisted for Amnesty's Special Award for Human Rights Journalism Under Threat. The award...

Authorities at Heydar Aliyev International Airport barred a reporter whose life has been threatened from leaving the country today, the Baku-based Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety said. Agil Khalil, a reporter for the independent daily Azadlyg, tried to board a flight to France Thursday morning when he was stopped by a plainclothes agent at a passport checkpoint. Khalil did not receive...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is disturbed by the closing of the alternative English-language biweekly the eXile in Moscow. The paper announced on its website last week that it was forced to shut down after nervous investors withdrew support in the wake of a politicised audit of its content. "Russian authorities are using politicized inspections and broadly worded extremism...

The first six months of 2008 have been marked inMorocco by an avalanche of trials and repressive judicial and administrative decisions. At the same time, promises by Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi’s government to reform the press law have still not materialised. No bill has yet been submitted to the chamber of deputies. Journalists were stunned when reporter Mostapha Hurmatallah of the weekly Al

The joint trial of independent newspaper, the Standard, its editor Davison Maruziva, and Professor Arthur Mutambara, leader of a faction of opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has been postponed to July 10. The Standard newspaper, Maruziva and Mutambara stand charged under Section 31 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act following the publication of an opinion...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has appealed for charges to be dropped against Mazen Darwish, the president of its partner organisation, the Syrian Centre for Media & Freedom of Expression, two days ahead of the verdict in his defamation trial on June 18. Darwish, a journalist and human rights activist, was arrested on January 12 while covering violent clashes in the Damascus suburb of Adra and...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has denounced repeated efforts by authorities in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia to shut down the regional news website Ingushetiya—one of the few remaining independent news outlets covering the volatile North Caucasus—for alleged extremism. On June 6, Kuntsevo district court in Moscow ordered the closure of the website, alleging it contained...

Three years on, the Danish cartoon wars just won't rub out. Governments are stoking the crisis by instigating protests against the cartoonists or the newspapers that dared to report on the controversy, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and other IFEX members have found. Cartoonists and journalists from the Arab world, Europe and the US say that the Danish cartoon crisis is being

The Algerian government is becoming increasingly intolerant of criticism. The communications ministry stripped the Agence France-Presse (AFP) bureau chief and the Reuters correspondent in Algiers of their accreditation on June 10, and a court fined the daily Liberté's publisher and editor and one of its cartoonists for defamation on June 16. "The lack of tolerance for outspoken journalists has...