State Persecution

Security police Thursday raided Belarussian broadcasters' offices and detained at least two reporters at their homes, Reuters has reported. The raids were launched two days after police broke up a rally by opponents of President Alexander Lukashenko and dozens of activists were fined or handed short jail terms. Zhanna Litvina, head of Belarus's Journalists' Association, told Reuters that the KGB...

Leading Egyptian newspaper editor Ibrahim Eissa has been sentenced to six months in prison for "reporting" on President Hosni Mubarak's health problems. Eissa, editor of Al-Dustour, will post the 200 Egyptian pounds bail (US$40, €25) to avoid serving his sentence while he appeals. "The state has been put at risk," Judge Sherif Kamel Mustafa said in a Cairo court, while reading out the verdict...

Leading Egyptian editor Ibrahim Eissa will Wednesday face charges of publishing "fake news about the president's health which afflicted the national economy." If convicted, Eissa faces up to three years in prison and a fine of as much as 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($3,600). This in the backdrop if the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemning the Egyptian government over raids and...

Syrian authorities are insisting on having a military tribunal examine charges against journalist Mazen Darwish, head of the Syrian Centre for Media Freedom and Freedom of Expression. He is accused of "libelling and defaming the state's bodies" by publishing a feature report about the January 2008 riots in Damascus, and for criticising the security bodies' failure to protect the citizens killed in...

The Burmese Press Scrutiny and Registration Board has suspended the 7 Days News journal for a week for reporting on a multiple-murder case in its March 13 issue, according to Mizzima News. The report quoted police and covered the funeral of a family of four and their domestic help who were shot dead in broad daylight near the home of imprisoned leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon on March 3, said...

Authorities in in the Russian republic of Ingushetia want to see the back of a private television channel that has shown critical reports from the region. In an open letter to the Russian parliament, the prosecutor-general, the FSB security service and the interior ministry, delegates of the region’s Popular Assembly demanded that Moscow-based REN-TV stop broadcasting in the Republic, according to...

The editor of a small-circulation fortnightly is being detained for no known reason since March 7 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Nsimba Embete Ponte, editor of L’Interprète, is being held incommunicado in a building used by the National Intelligence Agency (ANR) in Kinshasa. “The security forces have no grounds for acting in this way,” Paris...

Yemen banned a new magazine Sunday for publishing a picture of the nation's president deemed "inappropriate" by authorities, the Associated Press (AP) has reported quoting the magazine's editor. Nabil al-Soufi, editor of Abwab, said the security authorities banned the first issue of the magazine because they believed the picture of President Ali Abdullah Saleh on the cover made him look dour....

Iran has closed down nine film and lifestyle magazines for publishing pictures and stories about the life of "corrupt" foreign film stars and promoting "superstitions." The Press Supervisory Board, a body controlled by hardliners, also sent warning notes to 13 other publications and magazines on "observing the provisions of the press law," the Culture Ministry said on its website, acording to an...

A journalist with a leading Azerbaijani newspaper who had to be hospitalised last week after being stabbed in the chest by a miscreant, has been released. acording to Arif Aliyev, chairman of the Editors Association Yeni Nasil, Four unidentified assailants encircled Agil Khalil, a reporter with the opposition daily Azadlig (Freedom), as he was leaving his office in the evening of March 13. One...