MOSCOW: Relatives of a Turkmen journalist who died while in prison face harassment from authorities in the repressive Central Asian nation and could face imprisonment themselves, an international reporters watchdog warned Friday. Human rights groups say Ogulsapar Muradova, a reporter with U.S.-funded Radio Liberty, was tortured while in prison in Turkmenistan. The International Helsinki Federation...
(IFJ/IFEX) - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is outraged by the murder of Bellal Hossain Dafadar, correspondent of the Khulna-based daily newspaper Janabani, who died in hospital after being attacked and stabbed by up to five assailants on September 14. According to local reports, Bellal Hossain Dafadar, 38, was returning home on a bicycle from a local bazaar at around 7 pm when...
(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, September 22, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned that a U.S. District Court judge has imposed jail sentences against two San Francisco Chronicle reporters who refused to reveal the source or sources of secret grand jury testimony about alleged steroid use by professional athletes. The judge, ruling on Thursday, stayed the sentence pending the outcome of...
TUNIS - Tunisia has confiscated Tuesday's edition of French newspaper Le Figaro because its content insulted Islam and the Prophet Mohammad, an official source said on Wednesday. The daily ran an article by philosopher Robert Redeker on the controversy over the Pope's remarks on Islam in which Redeker described the Koran as a "book of unprecedented violence" and accused Muslims of seeking to...
PRAGUE, September 21, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- A Swedish journalist specialized in Central Asian affairs says an independent Uzbek reporter who has gone missing, Jamshid Karimov, recently wrote her to say he feared he might be arrested. Speaking to RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, Elin Jonsson said she heard similar concerns from another independent Uzbek journalist who was detained a few days after. Jamshid...
New York, September 21, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the prosecution for criminal insult of a Russian journalist who satirized President Vladimir Putin’s campaign to boost the birth rate. Vladimir Rakhmankov, editor-in-chief of the independent news Web site Kursiv, went on trial today in the city of Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow, charged with insulting the...
New York, September 21, 2006—As Thailand’s new ruling military junta imposed restrictions on the media, the Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the transitional authority to uphold the press freedom guarantees enshrined in the recently dissolved 1997 constitution. The ruling Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy (CDRM) called a meeting today with senior media...
Few were surprised by last Monday's ban on Iran's leading reformist newspaper, Shargh (East), which has, for some time, boldly voiced dissatisfaction with the outcome of last year's elections that brought President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. The newspaper ran a cartoon the previous Thursday depicting a donkey -- a symbol of ignorance in Iranian culture -- with a halo around its head, braying at...
WASHINGTON: Applications from 15 Iranian journalists for visas to attend U.N. sessions were withdrawn by the Iranian government and not turned down by the United States as alleged in Tehran, a State Department spokesman said Wednesday. The applications were received Friday and would have been difficult to process in time for the opening Monday of the special session of the U.N. General Assembly...
(JED/IFEX) - Only a week after their broadcast programming had resumed, after being suspended by the illegal and unfair cutting of their signal for 21 days, both of the television channels, Canal Congo Television (CCTV) and Canal Kin Television (CKTV), were shut down again in the early evening hours of 18 September 2006, by a mysterious fire which broke out and caused extensive damage. CKTV is...
