State Persecution

As investigative journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener completed their 100th day in prison, hundreds of people marched down Istanbul’s Istiklal Avenue on June 18 to demand their release and the release of all the other journalists detained in Turkey. It was the third big march since their arrest on March 6. There is no sign of any weakening in support for Sik and Sener, whose fourth request for...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the disgraceful way the authorities are harassing and prosecuting journalists in Khartoum and the north of the country in an attempt to silence them and stop embarrassing revelations about human rights violation by the security forces. “While the international community and media have their attention turned to South...

Urinboy Usmonov, a reporter for the BBC World Service’s Uzbek-language service, is being held in a detention centre in the northwestern city of Khujand for allegedly belonging to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a non-violent Islamist movement that is banned throughout Central Asia, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Usmonov’s family began looking for him when he went...

Kyrgyz parliament adopted a resolution June 16 issuing a legally binding instruction to the prosecutor-general’s office, culture ministry and justice ministry to block access to the independent online news agency Ferghana ( www.ferghananews.com) because of its coverage of last year’s violence in the south of the country. “Blocking access to Ferghana would constitute a very shocking attack on one...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has deplored the death in prison of journalist and writer Hoda Saber and accused the Iranian regime of being responsible. He was taken to hospital with chest pains on June 10 and died of a heart attack a few hours later. The Evin prison authorities did not inform his family, who learned about his death two days later on the Internet....

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned a growing number of detentions by the Somali government's security forces against journalists covering weeklong protests in the KM4 area of the capital, Mogadishu. On Monday morning, security agents arrested 20-year-old reporter Mohamed Amin, of the privately owned Radio Kulmiye. He had been covering ongoing...

Belarusian authorities must end the retaliatory prosecution of Andrzej Poczobut, a Grodno-based correspondent for the largest Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, and release him immediately, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. Authorities put Poczobut on trial today in the western city of Grodno, local and international press reported. The trial is a...

A one-year jail sentence and a fine of 1000 dirhams (88 euros) has been imposed by a Casablanca court passed June 14 on Rachid Nini, the editor of Al-Massae, one of Morocco’s leading newspapers, at the end of a trial marked by judicial intransigence, repeated adjournments and a refusal to free him on bail. Held since April 28, the newspaper editor was tried on charges of disinformation and...

Two Pakistani journalists who captured images of apparent military violence against unarmed foreigners and a local man are being threatened, their colleagues have told New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The threats have come amid calls from high-ranking Pakistani military leaders to quell public criticism of their policies, made at a Thursday meeting of top...

Central African Republic authorities have charged the director of the independent weekly The Hills of Bangui, Faustin Bambou, with inciting hatred and disorder among the military forces and insulting the government, Bambou told New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The director was sent directly to Ngaragba Prison in the capital, Bangui. Four military policemen...