State Persecution

Jean Bosco Gasasira, the editor of the fortnightly Umuvugizi, has been convicted on charges of defamation and invasion of privacy but has been acquitted on the more serious charge of insult and abuse, on which he had been facing a possible sentence of more than two years in prison. In its verdict and sentencing issued on November 13, the Kigali court also refrained from ordering Umuvugizi’s...

Two Pakistani journalists, Rab Nawaz Joya and Javed Kanwal Chandor, have been held since November 10 in a police station in Okara district, in the northeastern province of Punjab, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Although charged with theft and fraud, they were arrested for helping Pakistani and international news media get background information about Ajmal Kasab, a participant in...

Six private newspapers in Gabon have been suspended by the government-controlled media-monitoring body, the National Communications Council. The council announced the suspensions, which range from one to three months, on Tuesday evening on state-run TV, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. The papers have been suspended for “violating the ethics of journalism”...

Prison sentences were awarded Wednesday to two Azerbaijani video bloggers detained in July on fabricated charges of “hooliganism” and “inflicting minor bodily harm,” the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Judge Araz Huseynov with the Sabail District Court in Baku handed Emin Milli, 30, who runs an online video blog known as ANTV, a two and a half year jail term...

A Baghdad court has ruled that the London-based Guardian newspaper defamed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in an April 2009 article depicting increasing authoritarianism in his government. On Tuesday, the court fined the Guardian 100 million Iraqi dinars (US$86,000) in connection with the article, which quoted unnamed members of the intelligence service as saying that al-Maliki was...

Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) Tuesday voiced outrage at a prosecution call to permanently shut down the independent bi-monthly Umuvugizi and to sentence its editor, Jean Bosco Gasasira, to a 26-month jail sentence for libel. The Paris-based press freedom organisation urged the judge who is due to rule in the case on November 13 not to follow the recommendation made on October 26 by the judge...

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged Moroccan King Mohammed VI to order the release of a jailed editor and to put an end to the use of the judiciary to silence independent media. Editor Driss Chahtan of the independent weekly Al-Michaal is due to appear before a Rabat appeals court on Tuesday. In mid-October, Chahtan was sentenced by a minor court to a year in prison...

There has been an increase in attempts to intimidate Kyrgyzstan’s independent media after Kubanychbek Joldoshev, a newspaper reporter based in the southern city of Osh, became the seventh journalist to be physically attacked since the start of the year. He was badly beaten after his taxi was stopped by police on November 2, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. A reporter for the municipal...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) on Tuesday condemned the decision of a court specialising in press offences that sentenced journalist Munir Al-Mawari of independent weekly Al-Masdar in his absence to two years in prison for libelling President Ali Abdallah Saleh and also banned him for life from working as a journalist. The newspaper’s editor, Samir Jubran, was sentenced in the same case on...

The newly established Press and Publications Court in Sana’a sentenced Munir Mawari, a Washington-based Yemeni journalist and contributor to the independent weekly Al-Masdar, to two years in prison on charges of defaming the president, journalists told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The court also barred him for life from practicing journalism in Yemen. The court handed...