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(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, March 23, 2007 - The bureau of satellite television Al-Jazeera in the capital Mogadishu was indefinitely shuttered on Thursday following an order from intelligence officials of Somalia's Ethiopian-backed transitional government, according to news reports. The bureau of the Qatar-based broadcaster was "effectively closed" today after the station received a letter from the...

(CJES/IFEX) - Gleb Ivanov, editor of the Astrakhan opposition weekly "Fakt i Kompromat", was charged with three crimes by the Astrakhan prosecutor's office and the interior affairs department for the Astrakhan region on 17 March 2007. Ivanov's colleagues believe this repressive action was taken against the journalist over a statement by a subordinate of Tatyana Belova, the head of the Federal...

(RSF/IFEX) - Following the police chief's recent admission that the security forces have been involved in abductions, Reporters Without Borders has confirmed that the military participated in the arrest of journalist Subramaniam Ramachandran on 15 February 2007, north of Jaffna. Colleagues think he is now being held secretly at a military camp. "We appeal to the authorities to take action to...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has voiced concern about the preliminary findings of the autopsy and police investigation into the death of Jamal Uddin, a reporter for the news agency Abas and local newspaper "Dainik Giri Darpan", in the southeastern district of Rangamati. The authorities are saying it was suicide, but Uddin's colleagues insist that the circumstances suggest it was murder....

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, March 21, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the recent beating of a television journalist who reported on corruption at a railroad company in Kyrgyzstan. Kairat Birimkulov, reporter for the Kyrgyz main state broadcaster Government TV and Radio Company (GTRK), was attacked by two unidentified men on March 16 near his home in the Alamedin district of...

(Mizzima/IFEX) - The February issue of the monthly publication, "Padauk Pwint Thit", a Burmese-language magazine, was suspended without any reason cited by Burma's Censorship Board, sources from Rangoon's literati said. The edition in question, whose cover featured a portrait of veteran Burmese litterateur Thakhin Ko Daw Hmine, was barred from being published although permission had been obtained...

A feud between the Kazak media and a government official they accuse of restricting their liberty has led to the minister in question, Yermukhamet Yertysbaev, apologising live on television. It is unusual for a cabinet minister in Kazakstan to come off worst in an encounter with journalists and non-government groups. It is usually the other way round - the government has often come under fire from...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has condemned the 14-month prison sentence imposed in absentia on journalist Mohamed Fourati on 9 March 2007 by an appeal court in Gafsa (400 km south of Tunis) for two articles he wrote in 2002. One, published on the Aqlma online news website, was said to prove he belonged to an opposition group. The other was about fundraising for the family of a political...

Scheming by Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) is killing off the few remaining independent news media while the government-controlled Media Information Commission (MIC) continues to use obligatory press accreditation as way to pressure journalists in an entirely unacceptable fashion, Reporters Without Borders said today. “The infiltration of the last privately-owned media by the...

Reporters Without Borders expressed its deepest sympathy today with the family and colleagues of Miguel Pérez Julca, a radio journalist who was gunned down on 16 March in Jaén, in the northwestern province of Cajamarca. Given the stories Pérez was covering and the manner of his death, the organisation hopes the police will thoroughly investigate the possibility that it was connected with his work...