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(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, January 12, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores a Baku court's decision to extend by two months the pretrial detention of two journalists accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Editor-in-Chief Samir Sadagatoglu and reporter Rafiq Tagi of the independent newspaper Senet were arrested on November 15, after publishing an article that alleged Islam's...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, January 11, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by orders from the Bangladeshi Information Ministry that private broadcast outlets suspend news programs and print outlets halt critical news coverage during a state of emergency announced this evening. "It's essential that at this very sensitive moment Bangladeshi citizens have unfettered access to...

(MFWA/IFEX) - On 9 January 2007, Radio Victoire, a privately-owned FM radio station in Lome, was suspended for 15 days by the media regulator Haute Autorité de l'Audiovisuel de la Communication (HAAC) for alleged unprofessional conduct. The radio station is scheduled to resume broadcasting on 23 January. According to HAAC, the station "chose not to respect the advice and opinion of the media...

New York, January 11, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the Nigerian government’s apparent crackdown on critical reporting, as security service agents reporting directly to the president engaged in the second newspaper raid in as many days. State Security Service (SSS) officials were holding Dan Akpovwa, publisher of the private weekly Abuja Inquirer, incommunicado late today in...

(SEAPA/IFEX) - The military junta in Thailand has ordered the broadcast media to refrain from reporting about deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his cohorts. The ruling Council on National Security (CNS) is invoking military order No. 10 for the first time since issuing it on 20 September 2006, the day after it successfully staged a bloodless putsch. The order urges media cooperation in...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has called for the release of Ali Farahbakhsh and Kaveh Javanmard, two journalists who have been held since late 2006, and urged the Iranian authorities to put an end to a wave of arbitrary arrests and harassment of media personnel that is taking place throughout the country. "From Tehran to the northern Kurdish region, the harassment of journalists has been...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, January 10, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns attacks by protesters and police against at least 11 Bolivian reporters, photographers, and camera operators covering Monday's violent demonstrators in the central city of Cochabamba. Thousands of demonstrators - including members of the ruling leftist party Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), labor unions, and...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today condemned the retaliatory dismissal of 15 journalists and other employees at private television channel Global Television (Global TV) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) who were barred from their offices by management at the end of December after they asked for back pay. On December 26, 2006, Global TV replaced 15...

(FLIP/IFEX) - On 9 January 2007, after almost two months' detention, journalist Freddy Muñoz Altamiranda, of the Venezuela-based television channel Telesur, was released following the prosecutor general's revocation of a security order against him. Muñoz, was taken into custody on 19 November 2006, accused of "rebellion" and "terrorism". After reviewing the arrest warrant against Muñoz issued by...

(CJES/IFEX) - On 11 January 2007, Edward Kitashov, correspondent for the magazine "The Person and the Law", informed CJES that he was the victim of an assault on 5 December 2006. He reported the assault, which took place near the Moscow subway station "Polezhaevskaja", to a regional police station. "An unidentified person struck my head with something heavy. I lost consciousness and when I...