State Persecution

The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Bahraini authorities to launch an immediate and thorough investigation into the death of a blogger while in state custody. Bahraini authorities, meanwhile, announced that they would file criminal charges against three senior editors at the Gulf kingdom's premier independent daily, continuing a months-long pattern of violence, harassment, and...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on Syrian authorities to release journalist Mohamad Zaid Mastou, who was arrested on April 6 in Damascus by security agents and taken to an undisclosed location. "The manner of his arrest and the lack of information about his whereabouts raise concerns for his safety and wellbeing," said Jim Boumelha, IFJ President. "The Syrian regime...

Belarusian authorities must drop politicized libel and insult charges against Andrzej Poczobut, a Grodno-based correspondent for Poland's largest daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, and release him immediately, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. Prosecutors in Grodno opened a criminal investigation against Poczobut on March 28 and charged him with insulting...

New York-based press freedom organisation Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged Burundi Justice Minister Ancilla Ntakaburimvo to intervene in the case of Jean-Claude Kavumbagu, editor of the news website NetPress who has been improperly imprisoned since July 17, 2010, on a charge of treason. In a letter to the minister, CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon urged the state prosecutor to...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has denounced as “illegal and absurd” the efforts of the Tajik government to get dissident journalist Dodojon Atovulloev forcefully returned to Tajikistan from his exile in Russia and Germany and called on these two governments to protect him. The state prosecutor in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, sent an extradition request to the...

Carabobo Stereo 102.3 FM, a radio station based in the northern state of Carabobo, has been off the air since the evening of March 18 when around 30 representatives of the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) turned up unannounced with soldiers, shut it down and seized its equipment, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Claiming to be carrying...

A criminal defamation case has been filed by Pradel Henriquez, the director-general of state-owned Télévision Nationale d’Haïti (TNH), in Port-au-Prince against three TNH journalists – Eddy Jackson Alexis, Josias Pierre and Jacques Innocent – who say they were fired for being critical of President-Elect Michel Martelly. Alexis was TNH’s news editor. Henriquez, who also heads state-owned Radio...

The operations of Geo TV network’s profitable sports channel, Geo Super, have been suspended in Pakistan on the orders of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), which regulates TV stations, cable operators, Internet and mobile phones, and is responsible for developing access to information. Geo News, which is also part of the Geo TV network, has accused the PEMRA of blocking...

There are no longer any journalists in prison in Cuba. The last one was Albert Santiago Du Bouchet, who arrived in Spain Friday along with 36 other Cuban dissidents who were released on condition that they agree to go into exile, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The head of the independent Habana Press agency, Du Bouchet had been detained since April 18...

Andrey Pachobut, the correspondent of the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, has been detained since April 6, when he was arrested as he was trying to leave the western city of Hrodna to take part in a videoconference in Minsk with Members of the European Parliament about the persecution of journalists in Belarus. It seems that the government’s conciliatory gestures in recent days were designed solely...