State Persecution

Bui Chat, the head of the independent publishing house Giay Vun (“Recycled Paper), was released on May 2 after being held for three days on his return from Argentina but was briefly detained again on May 3 for more questioning, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The authorities have also kept the “Freedom to Publish Prize” which he received from the...

Journalist Siamak Pourzand, 80, a major cultural figure in Iran, has committed suicide. Detained and under house arrest for ten years, banned from leaving the country and separated from his family, Pourzand killed himself on April 29 in Tehran. "We hold the Iranian authorities responsible for this gesture of despair. Despite several appeals to the authorities by his family and various human rights...

The kingpins of repressive machinery, political leaders of regimes hostile to civil liberties and direct organizers of campaigns of violence against journalists – they are the predators of press freedom. They prey on the media. There are 38 predators this year, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Pride of place goes to North Africa and the Middle East...

The Saudi government issued a decree on April 29 imposing new restrictions on the media and drastically limiting press freedom. The decree, which amends five articles of the 2000 press and publications law, is clearly designed to ensure that the protests sweeping the Arab world since the start of the year do not take any greater hold in Saudi Arabia than they have already. The decree bans...

Anyone who dares to speak out in Syria continues to be exposed to arbitrary arrest. One of the latest victims is Omar Koush, a writer and journalist from Aleppo, was arrested on arrival at Damascus airport Monday after participating in a conference in Turkey. He wrote an article on April 29 titled “Turkey: dual relations between Arab countries on the one hand and Islamist organizations on the...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned underground publisher and poet Bui Chat’s arrest at Tan Son Nhat airport on April 30. The founder of the Giay Vun publishing house, Chat had just returned from Buenos Aires, where he had received the “Freedom to Publish Prize” from the International Publishers Association (IPA). “The Vietnamese authorities gave no reason...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed concern over the fate of Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, editor of the magazine Voice of Thaksin, who was arrested by the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) on April 30 and was placed in pre-trial custody Monday by a Bangkok criminal court on a charge of lèse-majesté. A request for release on bail was rejected. “This...

The Rwandan government has been hounding one of its media bugbears, Jean Bosco Gasasira, editor of the bimonthly newspaper Umuvugizi and one of the country’s most outspoken journalists, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. Prosecutors Thursday asked Rwanda’s supreme court to sentence him to ten years in prison on charges on which the Kigali high court acquitted...

A court in the Colombo suburb of Pugoda refused to release Shantha Wijesuriya, a journalist with the Lanka E-news online newspaper, on bail pending trial on a contempt of court charge for an erroneous news report. Access to the website was also blocked on an order from the court pending the outcome of the trial, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF)...

The Belarus Information ministry on April 25 requested the Supreme Economic Court to shut down two prominent weekly newspapers, Nasha Niva and Narodnaya Volya, under article 51, subsection 2.2, of the mass media law. This article says that any media organization can be closed after receiving two warnings from the information ministry in a single year. “The closure of Nasha Niva and Narodnaya Volya...