State Persecution

The Managua-based daily El Nuevo Diario has been under pressure since the start of the year. One of its reporters, Luis Galeano, has received death threats over two sensational corruption stories he wrote for the newspaper, one in January and the other in February. At the same time, its management accuses the authorities of obstructing importation of the inputs it needs to print, Paris-based press...

Ivorian police in the economic capital, Abidjan, interrogated and issued summonses for questioning last week for editors of newspapers favourable to former presidential candidate Alassane Ouattara, according to local journalists. The UN has recognised Ouattara as the president-elect since disputed November 2010 runoff elections against President Laurent Gbagbo. Police and an assistant prosecutor...

An Istanbul court on Friday ordered three online journalists detained on charges of “inciting hatred and hostility through the media,” membership of a “terrorist organisation” and obtaining and publishing confidential state documents. They are facing possible sentences of more than 20 years in jail, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported They are Soner Yalçin...

Authorities have detained Ross Dunkley, editor-in-chief and chief executive officer of the Myanmar Times newspaper, on immigration-related charges in Burma, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Dunkley, an Australian citizen, was arrested on February 10 on returning to Burma from a business trip in Japan, according to a statement released by his publishing group. He is being...

Vietnamese cyber-dissident Vu Quang Thuan’s deportation by Malaysia and his arrest by the Vietnamese authorities on arrival at Ho Chi Minh City airport on February 2 has been condemned by Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). He is now facing a possible 20-year jail sentence of a charge of anti-state propaganda. No date has been set for his trial. Aged 44 and a leader of...

Luke Harding, correspondent of the British daily The Guardian who was deported from Russia on February 5, returned to his job in Moscow on February 12 after being issued a new visa by the government. But the paper said Monday its expiry date was not indicated and that he could be forced to leave the country again on May 31, the date his old visa expires, according to Paris-based press freedom...

Andrzej Poczobut, a Grodno correspondent for the largest Polish daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, has been sentenced to prison. According to reports in the local press, the Oktyabrsky District Court in Minsk sentenced Poczobut to 15 days in jail on charges of "participation in the unsanctioned protest rally" that followed the December 19 presidential elections. Poczobut covered the protests for Gazeta...

Taghi Rahmani, a veteran independent journalist and staunch free speech activist, was picked up at his Tehran home on Wednesday by men in plain-clothes and was taken to an unknown location, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. At the same time, several journalists and bloggers have been summoned for questioning by the Revolutionary Guards and the...

The regional bimonthly Tribune d’Afrique’s appeal hearing opened Thursday in Lomé but was immediately adjourned at the request of the lawyers representing Mey Gnassingbé, the president’s half-brother and a member of the president’s office, who brought a successful libel suit against the publication last year. Accepting the claims of Mey Gnassingbé’s lawyers that they had not had enough time to...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has urged Florida’s new Governor, Rick Scott, to explain his handling of the media since he has been brought into office on January 4, 2011. RSF is worried that his media policy has been skirting with press freedoms. For example, during his post-inauguration ceremony, on the 22nd Floor of The Capitol, Scott carefully “cherry-picked”...