State Persecution

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed concern over the way authorities in Burundi are treating two journalists employed by the newspaper Iwacu, Elyse Ngabire and Dieudonné Hakizimana, who were arrested for unknown reasons on November 5, held incommunicado for 48 hours and released at noon Sunday. They have been told to appear before Bujumbura police chief...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned Wednesday's arbitrary arrest of journalist Gafar Alsabki Ibrahim during a raid by intelligence officials on the independent newspaper Alsahafa. They took him away to an unknown location after making him surrender his mobile phone and preventing him from alerting his family. No reason was given for his arrest. The press...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reiterated its call for the release of Hojatullah Mujadadi, the only journalist detained in Afghanistan. According to the latest information it has obtained, Mujadadi’s arrest by the National Directorate of Security was based on a confession extracted by force from a young man identified as Veiss, an opponent of former Kapisa...

The Malawi government has imposed a ban on the publication of weekly tabloid The Weekend Times. In a letter dated October 28, the National Archives of Malawi issued an immediate suspension of The Weekend Times on charges of failing to register the paper, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The letter cited the 1958 Printed Publications Act, which requires all...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Gabonese authorities to free a journalist who was jailed on Tuesday for failing to pay exorbitant damages stemming from a 2004 civil libel suit. Jean-Yves Ntoutoume, editor of the private bimonthly Le Temps, was imprisoned over his newspaper's failure to pay 10 million CFA francs (US $20,000) in damages to Albert Méyé, a former treasurer of...

Authorities in Ethiopia's northeastern region of Afar are holding a journalist without charge since September 11, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Akram Ezedin is jailed in Asaita, the regional capital of Afar. He is 17 years old. His father is Ezedin Mohamed, the editor of Al-Quds, a privately owned Islamic weekly newspaper based in capital city of Addis...

A Yemeni terrorism court haccused freelance journalist and Al-Qaeda analyst Abdulelah Shai on Tuesday of working with Al-Qaeda, according to news reports. Shai, who is on trial along with his assistant Abdul Karim Daoud al-Shami, has been accused of “belonging to an illegal network” and “supporting the al-Qaeda network” from 2008 to 2010, AFP reported. The journalist’s arrest comes after Al...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has urged the Radio and TV Supreme Council (RTÜK) in Turkey to drop the prosecution it has brought against Kanal D, a privately-owned TV station critical of the government, for broadcasting the reactions of the families of ten soldiers who were killed in an ambush by members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The station...

On the first day of his trial Monday before a state security court, journalist Abdul Ilah Haydar Shae challenged the court’s legality and said those responsible for his abduction and forced disappearance should also be on trial, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). His lawyers, Abdel Rahman Barman and Khaled Al-Anssi, attended the hearing as observers and...

CBS radio in Uganda resumed normal broadcasting at 9:30 a.m. on October 23 after being closed for a year. Its return to the air turns the page on the government’s closure of four radio stations amid rioting in Kampala in September 2009, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. The press freedom organization nonetheless remains concerned about the climate for the...