State Persecution

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has welcomed the decision of the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to withdraw legal action against a website after an IFJ call for restraint by Iraq's political leaders in their dealings with media. At a historic meeting of journalists' leaders from 30 countries in Baghdad ten days ago IFJ had called for more professionalism from Iraqi media...

Elena Maglevannaya, a Russian journalist who was recently ordered to pay a fine of 200,000 roubles (4,500 euros) and to publicly retract her articles about the torture of a Chechen detainee, has asked for political asylum in Finland, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. She filed her asylum request while in Helsinki to attend a civic forum organised by the Finnish human rights group...

The general secretary of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association, Poddala Jayantha, was abducted in Sri Lanka, beaten, and dropped by the side of a road in a Colombo suburb on Monday. The attack came on a busy road during rush hour at 5:15 p.m. Jayantha's colleagues said witnesses at the scene told them six unidentified men in a white Toyota Hi Ace van with tinted glass windows grabbed...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on all parties to pursue diplomatic efforts to gain the release of detained US journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are facing trial in North Korea this week. The families of the two journalists spoke out Monday morning on US television to urge diplomatic talks to resolve the detentions independent of the larger geopolitical issues on the...

President Hugo Chávez Frías is damaging Venezuelan democracy by continuing to threaten private media with reprisals and making unwarranted accusations against the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has alleged. On Thursday, Chávez demanded that Attorney-General Luisa Ortega Díaz, Minister of Public Works and Housing Diosdado Cabello, and the Supreme Tribunal of Justice take action

A Baku court has rejected a request for the release of Mushfig Huseynov, a reporter with the daily Bizim Yol, who has had serious health problems since he was jailed in January 2008 for allegedly taking a bribe. “Huseynov’s state of health is grounds for immediate release,” Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “The law requires it. Prison conditions in Azerbaijan are appalling and do...

The government of Gabon has launched a crackdown on independent media coverage of President Omar Bongo's hospitalisation and potential succession issues. Bongo, Africa's longest-serving head of state, has been in a Spanish hospital since earlier this month amid conflicting reports about his condition. On Saturday, the state-run National Communication Council (known by its French acronym as CNC)...

Radio Mada reporter Evariste Ramanantsoavina has been released in Madagascar after being held since May 5, when soldiers arrested him in order to force him to reveal the location from which the station was broadcasting in defiance of a closure order. “We are relieved to learn that Ramanantsoavina is free at last,” Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “It is nonetheless deplorable that...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned journalist Elena Maglevannaya’s conviction by a court in the southern city of Volgograd of defaming the prison service in articles about torture in Russian prisons that she wrote for the website Vestnikcivitas. Some of the articles were about the case of Zubayr Zubayrayev, a young Chechen imprisoned in Volgograd. In a May 13 ruling, the court found...

Sierre Leone journalist Sylvia Blyden has been forced into hiding after receiving death threats, while another, Umaru Sitta Turay, suffered a vicious knife attack, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Both journalists were targetted for attack because they had allegedly “libelled” Sierra Leone’s president, RSF said, urging the head of state to call off the “witch-hunt” against...