On the cold, grey afternoon of Oct. 7, a modest Lada car loaded with groceries pulled up outside a central Moscow apartment building. An elegant figure with steel-grey hair and large glasses emerged, shopping bags in hand. Anna Politkovskaya, Russia's most dogged investigative journalist, was facing a deadline and planning to finish her latest story by the next day. On her desk were photographs...
A thousand mourners placed flowers around the casket of Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow on Tuesday, weeping for one of Russia's most famous journalists, who was assassinated last week. This is a huge story -- eclipsed by the North Korean nuclear test -- that says much about the Russia of today and the future. Politkovskaya was the Bob Woodward and the Seymour Hersh of Russian journalism rolled into...
The opposition in Kyrgyzstan is pressing the government to investigate a recent arson attack which put the country’s only independent nationwide television broadcaster out of action. The incident highlights continuing concerns about how committed the administration of President Kurmanbek Bakiev is to freedom of speech The attack on Piramida TV took place overnight on September 27 to 28, when...
Aids activists and journalists are mourning the death of Omololu Falobi, founding member and the director of Journalists against AIDS (JAAIDS) Nigeria. He died from injuries sustained in an armed robbery on Thursday. Falobi was shot by robbers on his way back from speaking to young entrepreneurs on the importance of social responsibility. He passed away this Sunday. A multiple-awards winning...
MOSCOW, October 10, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Anna Politkovskaya's death bears many trademarks of a contract killing. If it is determined that is the case, she will join a staggering list of 12 fellow journalists who are believed to have been slain by hired killers since Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which recently named...
(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has expressed deep concern about death threats made against two journalists who voiced opposition to the government and a climate of fear which has also left another journalist targeted in a shooting holed up in a hotel for the past three months. Joaquín Morales Solá, political columnist for the daily "La Nación", and Jorge Fontevecchia, chief executive of the publishing company...
HARARE — Zimbabwean authorities have again locked horns with the country’s independent media after a state watchdog accused the journalists’ union of disseminating propaganda against President Robert Mugabe’s regime. The latest complaint was filed against the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) days after a case against an independent radio station was thrown out by a court in Harare last week...
New York, October 4, 2006-The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns this week's arrest of Rudy Apolo, a columnist and publisher of the Asian Star Journal and Asia Star Balita, and three members of his editorial staff on a criminal defamation charges related to reports on alleged government corruption. The four were arrested Monday morning in the city of Barangay Santa Fe, Cavite province, on a...
The founder and editor-in-chief of the two most popular newspapers in Azerbaijan, Einulla Fatullayev, says he is closing the two publications and abandoning journalism, after he was given a suspended jail sentence by a Baku court. On October 3, readers of the weekly Realny Azerbaijan and the daily Gündelik Azerbaijan read the last combined issue of the papers in which the editors bid farewell to...
The Delhi High Court has directed the Chairman of United News of India (UNI) and the Registrar of Companies to maintain the 'status quo as of date' and restrained them from transferring a major stake in the news agency to Zee TV's Subhash Chandra-owned Mediavest India Pvt Ltd. While hearing a petition filed by Bhopal-based Dainik Sandhya Prakashan, Justice Rekha Sharma asked the UNI Chairman and...
