State Persecution

Makhmadyusuf Ismoilov, a reporter with the Dushanbe-based independent weekly Nuri Zindagi has been imprison in northern Tajikistan, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Ismoilov was arrested in Sogd region on November 23, but the regional press first reported on the case on Monday. Ismoilov is currently being held in a pretrial facility in the city of Khujand, according to the...

Government officials responsible for the sudden suspension of senior news editor Dorah Masseung from her management position at the Papua New Guinea National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) must let the national media do its work without fear or political pressure, according to the Pacific Freedom Forum (PFF). Masseung, the executive news director for NBC, was "relieved" of her duties on December...

Iranian authorities have arrested three journalists from the daily Sharq, bringing the number of the newspaper's incarcerated staffers to seven in less than a week, according to news reports. In other developments, veteran journalist Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, has been sentenced to 16 months in prison, the BBC reported, and blogger Hossein Derakhshan was returned to jail after being temporarily...

Ukraine’s administrative supreme court has begun examining the appeals of privately-owned TV stations TVi and 5 Kanal against the withdrawal of their over-the-air broadcast frequencies and licences, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. TVi and 5 Kanal are appealing against a June 8 decision by a Kiev administrative court stripping them of their frequencies...

Dorah Masseung, the executive news director of Papua New Guinea's main public radio broadcaster, the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), has been suspended as a result of presumed pressure from the authorities amid a political crisis, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Her removal was followed by a directive from the station’s management requiring...

The Chinese authorities refuse to say what has become of journalist and human rights activist Hada, who should have been released from Inner Mongolia’s Chifeng prison on December 10 on completing a 15-year jail sentence. There has also been no direct word from his wife Xinna and his son Uiles, who were arrested 10 days ago. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called...

The Lilongwe Magistrate court has freed Gabriel Kamlomo, online editor for Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS), a privately owned radio station. Kamlomo was accused of publishing "false information likely to cause public alarm". In a ruling issued on December 2, Senior Resident Magistrate Vikochie Ndovi said the court found Kamlomo with no case to answer, the Namibia-based Media Institute of...

Publisher Irfan Sanci (Sel Yayincilik/Publishing), recipient of the 2010 IPA Freedom Prize - Special Award, and the translator of Guillaume Apollinaire's Adventures of the Young Don Juan, have been acquitted in Istanbul. IPA, which observed the trial, welcomes their acquittal, hoping this will lead to other publishers' acquittals and a significant decrease in freedom to publish trials in Turkey...

Iran has sentenced a prominent reformist journalist to 16 months in jail on charges of insulting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and undermining the Islamic regime, he told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday. Mashallah Shamsolvaezin heads the Journalists' Association of Iran and was the editor of several reformist dailies closed in a crackdown on the press between 1998 and 2000. "I was sentenced...

A recent spate of journalists' arrests in Zimbabwe has compelled the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and more than 100 journalists to petition Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to stop the harassment of the media. According to MISA, among other cases, the petition is a reaction to the arrest of Nqobani Ndlovu from The Standard newspaper. Ndlovu was arrested on November 17 in Bulawayo...