The Indian government has refused to renew the visa of Shogo Takahashi, the New Delhi bureau chief of Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK). After making repeated attempts to get his visa renewed, the 46-year-old Takahashi, who had been the bureau chief since 2008, returned home Sunday. A NHK spokesperson said that the broadcaster was surprised at the Indian government’s abrupt decision. The...
The deposed government of Hamas movement still bars the circulation of the three major West Bank-based Palestinian dailies in the Gaza Strip for the third day after Israel allowed their entrance into the costal enclave on Wednesday, the dailies' circulation agents said Friday, according to Xinhua. Shukri Shublaq, one of the circulation agents in the Gaza Strip, told Xinhua that officers from the...
Spain's Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the reopening of a probe into the death of a Spanish journalist who was hit by US tank fire in Iraq in 2003, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. A spokeswoman said the Supreme Court had accepted an appeal by the family of cameraman Jose Couso and ordered the lower National Court to reopen the investigation into his death. Couso was one of two...
The US government has denied a visa to a prominent Colombian journalist who specializes in conflict and human rights reporting to attend a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. Hollman Morris, who produces an independent TV news programme called "Contravia," has been highly critical of ties between illegal far-right militias and allies of outgoing...
Shwan Ahmed, a freelance Iraqi journalist, is facing criminal defamation charges based on a series of articles he wrote alleging corruption in Sulaimaniyah, in northeastern Iraq. Ahmed told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) he was threatened by one of the parties in the case. Ahmed said charges were filed against him and that he received the threats after publishing a...
José Luis García Paneque, Pablo Pacheco Ávila, and Lester Luis González Pentón, independent Cuban journalists imprisoned during the 2003 crackdown against the political opposition and the press, are among the five dissidents to be released soon and sent to Spain as part of an agreement between the government of President Raúl Castro and the Catholic Church, international press reports said. “We’re...
Ramazan Yesergepov, the ailing imprisoned editor of the now-defunct independent newspaper Alma-Ata Info, is on a hunger-strike for the third consecutive day on Thursday in a penal colony in the southern Kazakh city of Taraz, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On June 25, Yesergepov announced his decision to go on hunger strike starting July 6 to protest his...
Azerbaijan’s Garadagh District Court in Baku on Tuesday sentenced imprisoned independent editor Eynulla Fatullayev to two and a half years in a strict-regime prison after finding him guilty of drug possession. Fatullayev, a 2009 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, has already served more than three years of an eight and a half year term on a series of fabricated charges...
An appeals court in Tunisia on Tuesday upheld a criminal conviction and prison sentence handed down to Fahem Boukadous, a correspondent for the satellite television station Al-Hiwar al-Tunisi, in connection with his coverage of violent labour protests in the Gafsa mining region in 2008. Boukadous, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), faces a four-year prison term on charges of...
Somali government forces have been increasingly harassing independent journalists covering violent fighting in Mogadishu, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Somali reporters targeted for their reporting included a New York Times correspondent and a CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner, while nine other journalists were injured this week while reporting during deadly...
