State Persecution

A Tashkent appeal court Wednesday upheld photographer and documentary filmmaker Umida Akhmedova’s conviction on charges of slandering and insulting the Uzbek people, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Her lawyer, Sergei Mayorov, tried without success for three hours to convince the court that her conviction by a lower court on February 10 was illegal. They said after the hearing that...

Sudan’s official press regulator, the National Press Council, is investigating two editors accused of insulting President Omar al-Bashir, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Yass Omar al-Imam, editor-in-chief of the pro-opposition daily Rai al-Shaab, and Fayez al-Silaik, acting editor-in-chief of the independent daily Ajras al-Hurriya, were questioned Monday by officials with...

A death threat has been made against imprisoned editor Eynulla Fatullayev, a 2009 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, and his family, according to CPJ. An anonymous male caller telephoned Emin Fatullayev, the editor’s father, at his Baku home at around 12:30 p.m. today and said he and his son must “shut up once and for all” or “the entire family will be destroyed,” the elder...

An Israeli journalist on assignment in Egypt has been arrested, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Yotam Feldman was arrested Sunday near the Egyptian-Israeli border while reporting on African immigrants illegally crossing into Israel, according to news accounts. Israeli TV Channel 10 said in a statement that Feldman was on assignment for the station and was working on a...

The Minsk police on Tuesday raided the offices of the independent news website Charter 97, the independent newspaper Narodnaya Volya, and the home office of freelance reporter Irina Khalip, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Masked officers with the Leninsky District Police Department in Minsk confiscated computers, equipment, and electronic documents at the three locations as...

Palestinian journalist Mustafa Sabri’s home in Qaliqilya, in the north of the West Bank, was raided by members of the security forces as he was about to give an interview on March 9, just hours after he was released from prison on payment of 5,000 Jordanian dinars (5,160 euros) in bail, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The newspaper Filastine’s former bureau chief, Sabri had been...

The Ethiopian Supreme Court reinstated fines on Monday against four newspaper publishing companies over their coverage of the disputed 2005 national election, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Judge Dagne Melaku, presiding over a panel of three-judge panel, upheld fines initially imposed in July 2007 against the Fasil, Serkalem, Sisay, and Zekarias publishing houses for...

The Malaysian home affairs ministry has issued to leading English-language daily, The Star, a warning about an article criticising the caning of three Muslim women under Sharia law, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. “As one of the country’s most widely-read newspapers, The Star should have a free hand to provide its readers with the broadest range of news and views on social issues,” Paris...

Political rivalry and tension prompted by the March 7 legislative elections in Iraqi Kurdistan resulted in a wave of violence against independent and opposition journalists in the days preceding the election and on election day itself. Journalists describe it as the most harrowing period since the US invasion of Iraq in April 2003. “I am really concerned about these press freedom violations, which...

Kazakh authorities have banned the distribution of the independent weekly Respublika-Delovoye Obozreniye, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Tuesday. On March 1, the Medeu District Court in Almaty denied the weekly’s appeal and left in place a ban on the paper’s distribution that had been imposed in mid-February. The ban will remain in place until the newspaper pays 60 million Kazakh...