State Persecution

The partition of the Palestinian Territories resulting from the Islamist party Hamas’ takeover in the Gaza Strip in June has eroded media diversity. Broadcast media that are affiliated to Fatah or support it have stopped operating in Gaza, while pro-Hamas journalists are exposed to threats in the West Bank, controlled by the Palestinian Authority, Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has said....

An Iranian journalist has been arrested after he presented himself to a Tehran court in response to a summons. Neither Soheil Assefi's family nor his lawyers know where he is being held or with what he is charged. Officials from the prosecutor's office searched his home on July 31, taking personal documents and his computer's hard disk. Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for the release of...

The editor of the Arabic-language weekly Nichane and its sister French-language weekly TelQuel, has been charged with “disrespect for the king” under article 41 of the Moroccan press law. Ahmed Benchemsi received a summons from the Casablanca judicial police for the first time on August 4 after the latest issue of Nichane had been seized from news stands on the orders of Prime Minister Driss...

Seventeen German journalists are under investigation in the alleged leak of classified documents given to a parliamentary committee. The documents related to a parliamentary inquiry into possible German government complicity in CIA prisoner flights and the detention of two men. German opposition parties have condemned a criminal investigation into journalists accused of quoting from classified...

Ethiopia's High Court has imposed heavy prison sentences on four journalists jailed in connection with their coverage of deadly post-election unrest in 2005, after the journalists waived their defence and pleaded guilty in anticipation of a pardon, according to the Comittee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). All of them worked for now-defunct Amharic-language weeklies. Editors Dawit Kebede of Hadar and...

A US congressional committee plans to investigate whether Yahoo Inc lied during testimony over its role in a human rights case in China that sent journalist Shi Tao to jail for 10 years. Announcing the investigation, House of Representatives foreign affairs committee chairman Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, Friday last it would be shameful if it was confirmed that Yahoo had known why the...

Iran has closed down prominent pro-reform daily Shargh (East) three months after it was allowed to resume publicaiton following a ban, its director said on Monday. Shargh is the second publication critical of the government to be shut down since July. The closure of Shargh coincides with what rights groups and diplomats say is a broad crackdown on dissenting voices in the Islamic state, which is...

Reporters Without Borders condemns the government’s confiscation yesterday of the latest issues of the Arabic-language weekly Nichane and the French-language weekly TelQuel for “failing to respect” King Mohammed. “Press freedom violations are mounting dangerously in Morocco,” the organisation said. “The political and judicial authorities must abandon this archaic practice of systematically...

Opposition-aligned Venezuelan TV channel RCTV has been allowed by the country's Supreme Court to remain on cable, just hours before a government-set deadline that could have removed it from the cable lineup. The Supreme Court of Justice said in a statement Wednesday that it suspended the telecommunications commission's order for Radio Caracas Television and other cable channels to register as...

Reporters Without Borders called today for the release of Farshad Gorbanpour, who was arrested yesterday along with fellow journalist Masoud Bastani on the orders of Tehran prosecutor Said Mortazavi. Bastani was freed after several hours but Gorbanpour was transferred to Evin prison. This brings the number of journalists and cyber-dissidents detained in Iran to 11. Also yesterday, a Tehran...