State Persecution

Kabul Weekly claims it has been put out of business after daring to criticise President Hamid Karzai. On Wednesday staff met with their editor, Mohammad Faheem Dashty, for the final time after producing the last edition of a newspaper that has been a regular sight on the streets of the capital since 2002, according to a report in the Guardian. Dashty said he had no choice but to shut down after...

Authorities in Libya on Friday prevented foreign journalists invited to report in the country from covering the crackdown on protesters in the capital, according to news reports. In southern Iraq, anti-riot police attacked at least five local journalists covering protests in Basra, according to news reports. Hundreds of anti-Qaddafi protesters gathered in Tajoura, a suburb of Tripoli, after Muslim...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on journalists in Bahrain to put their unity above political wrangling that has divided journalists in the wake of protests movement for political changes in the kingdom. The Federation's call comes after revelations that some journalists have been blacklisted over their alleged links with the ruling royal family. "We urge journalists to...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern over the safety of a Cameroonian editor who is being prosecuted in connection with a leaked official document, according to local journalists and news reports. On February 24, a public prosecutor in Yaoundé charged Raphaël Nkamtchuen, editor of the periodical La Boussole, with "unauthorised communication with a detainee" and...

The Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) has condemned threats by the country's authorities to prosecute Sylvia Olayinka Blyden, publisher of Awareness Times, a privately-owned Freetown-based newspaper, with the antiquated criminal libel law. According to SLAJ, the use of the seditious criminal libel law is illegal and a threat to media freedom and free expression. The Media Foundation...

A presenter at Masaka-based Top Radio, Ssozi Lyazi Ssekimpi, is reported to have been suspended over a talk show which discussed electoral malpractice witnessed during recent presidential and parliamentary elections, according to Human Rights Network for Journalists (HRNJ-Uganda). Ssekimpi, who joined Top Radio four years ago, has been working as an editor and presenter of the weekly talk show...

Turkish journalist Ahmet Topcu has been sentenced to eleven months in prison in connection with his criticism of a mayor. In June 2010, Halil Bakirci, mayor of Rize (eastern Black Sea coast) and a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), had proposed that "Kurds should have co-wives" in order to solve the Kurdish question. The mayor was broadly criticised for his suggestion and...

There has been a wave of searches and arrests of investigative journalists in Istanbul and Ankara in connection with a probe into an alleged anti-government plot. Journalists who have helped to shed light on this case are being made to pay for the tension between the government and the secularist and ultra-nationalist opposition, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...

Security forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi continue to detain journalists and jam broadcast frequencies. Security forces have arrested the head of Libyan Journalists Syndicate, Salma al-Shaab, and Suad al-Turabouls, a correspondent for the pro-government Al-Jamahiriya newspaper, on Monday in Tripoli, according to news reports. However, a local journalist told New York-based press...

Journalist Natallya Radzina has alleged that that KGB officers had subjected her to psychological pressure and attempted to recruit her as an informant while she was in the KGB detention center in Minsk, according to naviny.by. At a news conference held on Monday, presidential candidate Ales Mikhalevich, who was released from the jail on his own recognisance on February 19, three weeks later than...