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A representative body of Pakistani newspaper editors has flayed the government for trying to 'control the press' through the formation of a proposed regulatory authority with punitive clauses. The Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) rejected the formation of the proposed Press and Publication Regulatory Authority (PPRA), dubbing it as 'yet another attempt to control the press' in Pakistan...

(FLIP/IFEX) - On 17 December 2006, it will be 20 years since the death of "El Espectador" editor Guillermo Cano Isaza, murdered in Bogotá by drug trafficking cartels. Cano Isaza was born in Medellín in 1925, and was a journalist for over four decades. At the age of 17 he began writing for the Bogotá daily "El Espectador", now a weekly. He later became the newspaper's director, a position he held...

Russian authorities have expelled Christoph Wanner, a reporter for Deutsche Welle, from the conflict-wracked republic as he was working on a report about a German aid organization. Wanner had been taken into custody on Thursday, accused of working without the required oversight by Russian authorities. He had been in Chechnya working on a report for Deutsche Welle television, DW-TV, highlighting...

Wellington - Military leaders in Fiji, who ousted the government in a coup earlier this month, have ordered the editor of the daily Fiji Post newspaper deported, according to reports from the capital Suva on Friday. The editor, Robert Wolfgramm, was born in Fiji but has been an Australian citizen since 1989. He told the Fiji Times his removal was probably because the paper has been 'a voice for...

(IPI/IFEX) - Vienna, 14 December 2006: The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists in over 120 countries, is deeply concerned by the ongoing intimidation and censorship of the Fijian press since the military coup d'état of 5 December 2006. In the most alarming development, Fiji's Daily Post Editor-in-Chief, Robert Wolfgramm, is...

(CMFR/IFEX) - Five journalists posted bail at the Regional Trial Court of the Manila City Hall on 14 December 2006 following the approval of the filing in court of libel charges against them by Jose Miguel Arroyo, the husband of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The journalists were sued in connection with an article that appeared in "Newsbreak" magazine on 3 December 2003. Editor-in-Chief...

(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is concerned by reports that a new press regulatory body that may be established in Pakistan is a replication of an infamous "black law" dating back to the 1960s. According to IFJ affiliate, the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), a report appeared in a leading Urdu language daily newspaper stating the government was about to...

(SEAPA/IFEX) - The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) welcomes the Indonesian Constitutional Court's landmark ruling on 6 December 2006, which declared as unconstitutional the "lèse majesté" articles that criminalise insulting the president and vice-president. Under the now annulled articles 134, 136, and 137 of the Criminal Code, anyone who disseminated, demonstrated openly or put up a...

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has voiced deep concern about an increase in the past two weeks in attacks on the press that are linked to Bolivia's growing political crisis. State and privately-owned media are becoming targets in tit-for-tat violence between government supporters and opponents. "Journalists from the state media and those that support President Evo Morales are clearly in danger in the eastern...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has firmly condemned the forcible closure of privately-owned Radio Warsan in the western city of Baidoa. Police working for the federal transition government, which has its headquarters in Baidoa, have been occupying the radio station since the afternoon of 14 December 2006. "You cannot claim to represent the democratic camp and at the same time behave like...