State Persecution

There has been a steadily worsening climate of harassment and intimidation that the Ethiopian authorities have imposed on the media, especially the private media, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Eskinder Nega, a former journalist jailed along with his wife in 2005 for supporting the protests that followed legislative elections, is again under pressure...

Hamas security forces raided media bureaus, assaulted journalists, and confiscated journalistic materials in Gaza Saturday, punctuating another day of anti-press attacks in the restive region. In Yemen, authorities expelled two Al-Jazeera correspondents, continuing a pattern of ousting international reporters. New York-based pressfreedom grouo Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the attacks...

The Daily News, Zimbabwe's largest selling newspaper that was banned eight years ago for criticising President Robert Mugabe, has hit the stands again. The Daily News was a strident critic of Mugabe. With presidential elections again expected later this year, the newspaper is hardly beating a retreat. According to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report, it went to the extent of asserting in its...

One journalist was fatally shot and another wounded in Sana'a Friday when Yemeni security forces used live ammunition to disperse demonstrators from a central protest area, killing dozens of people. The death of photographer Jamal al-Sharaabi is the first confirmed media fatality in Yemen since political unrest began in January, New York-based pressfreedom group Committee to Protect Journalists...

An attack was carried out against the press covering an event recently organised by opposition party candidates in Uganda. The forces attacked about a dozen journalists covering a protest rally in Jinja, eastern Uganda, organised by three opposition parties on March 11, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local journalists. The police and...

Sudan’s security forces have been waging a campaign of harassment against journalists in an attempt to silence media criticism. At their request, the attorney-general questioned three journalists who drew attention to their mistreatment of human rights activists, including cases of rape, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The collusion between the...

A 13-year jail sentence has been imposed by a Bangkok court on Thanthawut Taweewarodomkul, the administrator of website linked to the anti-government Red Shirt Movement, for three messages critical of the king that he allegedly posted on the site, called Nor Por Chor USA. Thanthawut, who has been detained since his arrest on April 1, 2010, was given a 10-year sentence under a section of the...

A court in Turkey on Thursday rejected a request for the provisional release of investigative journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener, who were arrested on March 3. They will now have to spend months in prison pending trial on a charge of belonging to an alleged conspiracy called Ergenekon, which the authorities regard as “terrorist organisation.” The court ordered their continued detention under...

On 10 March, Benin's media regulatory body, the Higher Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HAAC) suspended, for one week, nine privately-owned newspapers in the country over what they alleged were false and abusive publications. The newspapers which include Le Clairon, Le Béninois, L'Engagement, Les Scoops du jour, L'Audace Info, La Suite, La Nouvelle Tribune, Actu Express and Le Béninois...

Prince Prah, editor of the Daybreak, an Accra-based weekly newspaper, who was detained on March 16 by Ghana's intelligence agency, the Bureau of National Investigations, (BNI) was released unconditionally at about 21:30 hours GMT on the same day. Prah told the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) that during his six-hour illegal detention, he was interrogated on a wide range of issues including...