State Persecution

Amid an increasing crackdown on the media in Yemen, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called for Yemeni authorities to disclose the whereabouts of a journalist who has been held incommunicado since May 4 after he was arrested in southern Yemen. CPJ also called on the authorities to drop a series of lawsuits against an independent critical newspaper. Security forces arrested Fuad...

Radio Mada sports reporter Evariste Ramanantsoavina has been retained in detention and charged with “inciting revolt against the republic’s institutions,” defamation and disseminating false information, Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. He was arrested on May 5 and forced to reveal the location from which the radio was broadcasting in defiance of a closure order. “Even if...

Yemen has banned eight newspapers that have covered unrest in the southern part of the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Dozens of journalists gathered on May 7 in front of the country's press syndicate in the capital, Sana'a, to protest the government's decision to suspend the newspapers, the Associated Press reported. A similar demonstration was held in the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern over the administration's increasing pressure on the Republic of Korea's media. The arrest on April 28 of four staff members with the country's second-largest broadcaster, Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), is only the most recent step in what appears to be a broader effort to stifle independent reporting critical of government...

After confiscating thousands of copies of a critical independent newspaper, authorities laid siege on May 4 to the paper's offices in Aden, Yemen. The daily, Al-Ayyam, has been covering the ongoing conflict in the country's southern region. Bashraheel Bashraheel, general manager of Al-Ayyam, told CPJ that after three consecutive days of authorities confiscating thousands of copies of the newspaper...

With a military government that severely restricts Internet access and imprisons people for years for posting critical material, Burma is the worst place in the world to be a blogger, the Committee to Protect Journalists says in a new report. CPJ’s “10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger” also identifies a number of countries in the Middle East and Asia where Internet penetration has blossomed and

Iranian-American freelance journalist Roxana Saberi, who was sentenced to eight years in prison by an Iranian Revolutionary Court on charges of spying for the United States, remains on a hunger strike that she started a week ago, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Her father, Reza Saberi, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) after visiting her in Tehran's Evin Prison on her 32...

North Korea has announced that it would try American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee on unspecified criminal charges, according to international news reports. The Associated Press (AP) reported that a dispatch from the country said the pair would be tried for "confirmed charges" without specifying the nature of those charges or a timetable for the legal proceedings. "The relevant agencies of...

A high court judge in Singapore ruled on March 19, 2009, that Melanie Kirkpatrick, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, was in contempt of court for two articles and a letter to the editor published by the Dow Jones-owned Wall Street Journal Asia last year, according to international news reports. Kirkpatrick was ordered to pay SG$10,000 (US$6,549), according to the...

Indonesia's Supreme Court reversed its own 2007 ruling on April 16, 2009, and dismissed a $106 million case against the Hong Kong-based Time Warner publication that had been filed by the country's late President Suharto and continued by his heirs, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The decision marked the end of a lawsuit launched shortly before Suharto's death in 1999, a few...