Uncategorised

New York, February 9, 2007— The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores the reported death of prominent, award-winning journalist Fesshaye Yohannes, imprisoned without charges in September 2001, along with the majority of Eritrea’s independent press corps. Yohannes, founding editor of the defunct weekly Setit and a recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award in 2002, died in a prison...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, February 8, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is troubled by the overnight arrest of an opposition television station director by Tunisian police in the capital Tunis. Tahar Ben Hassine, director of Italy-based satellite channel Al-Hiwar Tunisi, was detained by Tunisian police in the al-Manar neighborhood after leaving Tunisian dissident journalist Taoufik Ben Brik...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the closure of the conservative daily Siassat Rouz since 3 February on the orders of the Press Monitoring Commission because of an article deemed to be an insult to Iran’s Sunni minority. “There was no justification for closing this newspaper,” the press freedom organisation said, calling for the immediate lifting of the ban. “In Iran, censorship is...

Reporters Without Borders voiced concern today about the mutual hostility between Sylvia Blyden, a government ally and publisher of the privately-owned Awareness Times daily, and Philip Neville, the executive editor of the privately-owned Standard Times daily, which led to Neville’s arrest yesterday in Freetown on a charge of libelling Blyden. “This regrettable case shows that Sierra Leone lacks...

New York, February 7, 2007— The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern today at the government’s indefinite removal of a new private television station from the air by cutting its use of a state-owned transmitter. Nation Television Uganda (NTV) went off the air Saturday after officials at the Broadcasting Council (BC), an official media regulator, switched off its transmitter and...

Egyptian human rights organisations have called upon the Supreme Council of Press (SCP) to comply with the law and not to hinder the publication of the newspaper Al-Badiel, which has met all provisions for release as set by the law. The legal 40-day period for the announcement of any SCP objection has passed with neither a response nor the approval of a licence for the newspaper. A journalist

KIEV, Ukraine: A Russian journalist has requested political asylum in Ukraine, he said Tuesday, claiming that authorities in Siberia fabricated a criminal case against him as retribution for his investigations into suspected corruption among regional officials. Alexander Kosvintsev said he feared for his safety in Russia because of his work, including with a paper he founded in the 1990s in his...

While eight people have been charged in the 19 January murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, the negligence of the authorities in this case and the sympathy for the murderer displayed by police in a video made public last week call for sanctions and measures to protect journalists in Turkey, Reporters Without Borders said today. “As the murder investigation continues, recent...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the detention of journalist Ramón Velázquez Toranso of the independent news Libertad, who has been held in the provincial prison in the eastern province of Las Tunas since his arrest on 23 January and who went on hunger strike on 30 January. Around 40 journalists have been detained, attacked or threatened, some of them several times, since Raúl Castro took...

CAIRO, Egypt - Press freedom is quickly losing ground in the Middle East as authoritarian governments retreat from liberalization undertaken early in the Bush administration's push for democracy, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday. The annual report paints a grim picture of diminishing press freedoms worldwide, with Middle Eastern countries among the worst offenders. Just two years...