State Persecution

Preposterous charges have been brought against the Sabaa news agency reporter Abdul Ilah Haydar Shae, whose trial before a special state security court is due to start Monday, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). A specialist in covering Al-Qaeda, Shae has been charged by the attorney-general with inciting the murder of the president and his son, “belonging...

A 13-year prison sentence has been handed down last week by a Burmese court to Nyi Nyi Tun, editor of the Kandarawaddy news publication, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On October 13, the Seikkan Township court attached to Rangoon's Insein Prison found the journalist guilty of "crimes against the state." He was convicted of violating the Unlawful...

Swaziland's Prime Minister, Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini, has announced his intention to create a law requiring newspaper columnists to seek permission before they write critically about the government, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Dlamini's statement appeared in the Tuesday edition of state daily Swazi Observer, according to the Media Institute of Southern...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned an armed attack on Kuwait City-based Scope TV, which was overrun by about 150 people brandishing knives and pistols on October 17. Some 10 people were injured in the course of the violence, the privately-owned satellite TV station’s executive director told the news agency Reuters. Employees said the assailants were...

Radio station director Hojatullah Mujadadi is currently the only journalist detained in Afghanistan. Although President Hamid Karzai ordered his release, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), an Afghan intelligence agency, is still holding him in appalling conditions, without allowing him the right to be defended by a lawyer. His arrests violates Afghan law, under which all cases involving...

Abdulmalik Boboyev, one of Uzbekistan’s few remaining independent reporters, was fined 10,000 dollars by a Tashkent court Friday on charges of defamation, insult and threatening public order. Boboyev, who pleaded not guilty, had been facing a possible five-year jail sentence, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). A journalist who is renowned for the quality...

The police and judicial authorities in the southeastern state of Chiapas on October 12 raided Radio Proletaria, a community radio station in the city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, in which arrests were made and the station was summarily dismantled, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The raid was carried out at night by around 30 armed and masked members of the...

The investigation into illegal telephone-tapping by the Colombian intelligence agency known as the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) entered a new phase Wednesday when the House of Representatives initiated a procedure that could result in former President Alvaro Uribe being questioned about his presumed involvement, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Iranian authorities to immediately disclose the names of two Germans who were arrested on Sunday and described as journalists in several news reports. CPJ also asked Iranian officials to clarify the circumstances surrounding the arrests of the two individuals and to state what, if any, charges were filed against them. The head of the German...

A Panama City court has banned TVN Canal 2 news editor Sabrina Bacal and Justino González, a former TVN Canal 2 reporter who is now a KW Continente commentator, from working as journalists for one year as well as fining them $6,000, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Issued on appeal on September 27 and announced on October 4, the sentences replaced the...