State Persecution

Yahoo shareholders have vetoed with an overwhelming majority the company's proposed Chinese anti-censorship policy. This comes close on the heels of the mother of jailed Chinese journalist Shi Tao announcing plans to continue with the lawsuit against Yahoo. Proposals to set up a human rights committee with the task of reviewing Yahoo’s policies around the world, specifically in China, were also...

As Bolivia undergoes massive political changes, its media is also going through tumultuous times. Bolivia's unstable political situation, widespread civil unrest, and weak rule of law present serious long-term threats to journalists amid the broader perspective of human rights. Observers see Bolivia’s current situation as a make or break situation for the Bolivian media, who seem to be the...

The detention of Al-Jazeera assistant cameraman Sami Al-Haj, who tomorrow begins his sixth year without charge or trial in the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is “unconstitutional and contrary to international law,” Reporters Without Borders said today, describing the detention centre as “one the biggest legal and humanitarian scandals of recent years” and reiterating its call for its...

Ethiopia's High Court today convicted four editors and three publishers of now-defunct weeklies of anti-state charges linked to their coverage of the government’s handling of disputed parliamentary elections in 2005, according to local journalists. Two of the editors were convicted of charges carrying life imprisonment or death. The journalists were arrested after a massive government crackdown on...

A jailed Chinese reporter accused of leaking state secrets has joined a U.S. lawsuit claiming Yahoo Inc. helped the Chinese government convict dissidents, his mother said Sunday. Shi Tao, who was sentenced in 2005 to 10 years in prison, is seeking compensation from the Sunnyvale, California-based Internet company, claiming Yahoo Hong Kong and Yahoo China provided information to the Chinese...

Sami al-Haj spends his days alone, thinking of his wife and the son he barely knows. He spends his time thinking of the world beyond the razor wire, of the world away from the walls and bars, the orange jumpsuit he is forced to wear and the military guards that oversee him. He thinks too of his fellow prisoners incarcerated along with him at Guantanamo Bay and the anguish they endure. And when he...

Amid government measures reinforcing censorship of television and telecommunications, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has appealed to President Pervez Musharraf to heed the appeals of Pakistan's journalists, the public and the international community to respect press freedom. "Gen Musharraf, it is not yet too late to rescind the new electronic media ordinance and to put an end to the arbitrary...

A newspaper in southwest China has sacked three of its editors over an advertisement saluting mothers of protesters killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. A young clerk with no knowledge of the Tiananmen massacre allowed a tribute to victims to slip into the classifieds page of the Chengdu Evening News, a newspaper in south-west China, the South China Morning Post reported. The tiny ad on...

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has called on democratic governments to take specific measures to protect freedom of the press in the face of widespread tightening of anti-terrorism measures. The WAN Board, meeting at the 60th World Newspaper Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, expressed its concern that following major terrorist attacks worldwide, tightened security and surveillance...

New York, June 6, 2007—A court in the capital, Banjul, on Tuesday fined a reporter for a now-banned newspaper in connection with a March 2006 story reporting the arrest of several suspects in the aftermath of a purported coup attempt, according to local journalists and news reports. Lamin Fatty of the private bi-weekly The Independent was fined 50,000 dalasi (US$1,850) on charges of publishing...