State Persecution

A 13-year prison sentence was handed down to Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari in absentia on Sunday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Newsweek correspondent Bahari, who was held in detention for four months on manufactured anti-state charges in 2009, was sentenced by a Tehran Revolutionary Court on Sunday to 13 years in prison, in addition to 74 lashes. Bahari...

Azerbaijani authorities illegally confiscated footage and reporting from Norwegian television reporter Erling Borgen and cameraman Dag Inge Dahl on Thursday, according to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Borgen, who has his own documentary production company, was working with Dahl on a film about freedom of expression in Azerbaijan, focusing on the case of imprisoned journalist Eynulla...

The US military has banned four reporters from different Canadian and US-based media outlets to cover military commission proceedings in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The reporters were banned after each named a US Army interrogator after being told to keep him and other participants in the proceedings anonymous. The proceedings were about the...

Three Palestinian press photographers have been arrested and two others physically attacked by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank since the start of April, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). In the latest incident, an Israeli soldier fired a tear-gas grenade at Muammar Jamil Awad, a photographer with the Palestinian news agency Wafa, while he was covering the weekly protest in Beit Jala...

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the two parties that control Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, have reached a “tacit strategic accord” to restrict the freedom of journalists as much as possible, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “Anything goes for the KDP and the PUK as far as muzzling the press is concerned,” RSF said. The security forces...

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has issued a pardon to Sri Lankan journalist JS Tissainayagam. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is waiting for official clarification, however, concerning several important details. The country’s recently appointed external affairs minister, GL Peiris, announced the pardon at a press conference in Colombo. “President Mahinda Rajapaksa has decided to pardon...

The Israeli military obstructed an Al-Jazeera crew trying to cover a rally in the village of Bil’in west of Ramallah on Friday, according to news reports and interviews. Israel Defence Forces arrested Al-Jazeera cameraman Majdi Bannoura and assistant Nader Abu Zer when they arrived in Bil’in to cover a weekly protest against the separation barrier being erected there by Israel, the Committee to...

The Ethiopian government detained last week two government TV journalists on allegations of misusing state property, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Editor Haileyesus Worku and reporter Abdulsemed Mohammed of Ethiopian Radio and Television Agency (ERTA) have not been formally charged since their arrests, according to local journalists. Friday, a magistrate extended their...

State-owned Internet service provider Kazakhtelecom has blocked access to the independent news portal Respublika and the website of its sister publication Respublika-Delovoye Obozreniye, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Access to both news portals, which often criticise Kazakh authorities for corruption and human rights violations, has been blocked today for all clients of...

Hang Chakra, editor and publisher of the opposition-aligned Khmer Machas Srok daily newspaper in Cambodia has been released from prison, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). He was granted a royal pardon on April 13 after serving nine months of a one-year sentence on a “criminal disinformation” conviction over a series of critical articles on alleged high-level government...