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Reporters Without Borders voiced dismay today at the threats that O Dia reporter Maria Mazzei and her family have been receiving since 15 August as a result of her reports about the trafficking in human bodies in Rio de Janeiro, and her claim that employees of the Medical Forensic Institute (IML) were selling cadavers to the so-called “Máfia dos Corpos” (Body Mafia). “We are deeply disturbed by...

It was May 2001 when President Islam Karimov proclaimed the “era of the internet” in Uzbekistan. Five years on, however, the picture is grim. In the wake of the Andijan massacre, Uzbekistan is more closed off than ever and the government has taken almost total control of the country’s last source of independent information - the internet. All sites which criticise Uzbekistan have been blocked...

(CPJ/IFEX) - August 16, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns an attack on Igor Mosiichuk, editor-in-chief of the independent Ukrainian weekly Vecherny Vasilkov, which follows a series of articles he published on local land deals and a controversial oil tank farm. Two unidentified assailants beat Mosiichuk August 14 in a street in Vasilkov, 23 miles (37 kilometers) southwest of the...

A Dhaka court yesterday framed charges against 10 people accused in the journalist Gautam Das murder case. Faridpur bureau chief of Dainik Samakal Gautam Das, 30, was brutally killed on November 17 last year. Judge Shahed Noor Uddin of the Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 framed the charges where six out of the 10 accused were present. He fixed August 22 for trial of the case. The charge-sheeted accused...

Accra, Aug. 16, GNA -- A photojournalist was on Wednesday attacked at the 24th February Road Courts by people suspected to be sympathisers of Tibu-Darko, who was picked up by the security agencies for allegedly dealing in narcotic drugs. The Photojournalist, Mr Ebo Hanson, who works with the 93Daily Graphic=94, was in the line of duty trying to take photographs of the accused person when a group...

(IPYS/IFEX) - On the evening of 4 August 2006, Judge Paulo Sérgio Romero Vicente Rodrigues, of the Fourth Civil Tribunal of the city of São José do Rio Preto, forbade the newspaper "Bom Dia" to report on a case of international medicine trafficking uncovered in the city, basing his decision on the confidentiality of the legal investigation into the case. The judge's ruling was in response to a...

(FLIP/IFEX) - Seven years after the 13 August 1999 murder of journalist and humourist Jaime Garzón in Bogotá, not one person is being detained for the crime. The only person found guilty of it was paramilitary commander Carlos Castaño, whose whereabouts have been unknown since April 2004. During the trial Juan Pablo Ortiz and Edilberto Sierra Ayala were detained as suspected of having carried out...

New York, August 15, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a television editor’s court conviction on a criminal defamation charge. The municipal court in the southern city of Prokuplje upheld a lower court ruling against Slavko Savic, senior editor of the local television station RTV Kursumlija. The court, ruling on August 10, sentenced Savic to a suspended prison term and one...

Leaders of local Jubo Dal and Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal yesterday burnt copies of the daily Prothom Alo and Janakantha for publishing what they say 'false news reports' against State Minister for Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment Lutfor Rahman Azad. Jubo Dal and Chhatra Dal leaders at a meeting also declared local correspondents of the dailies persona non grata and pledged to resist the...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has written to Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza voicing concern about the pernicious state of relations between his government and the media, and the alarming number of press freedom violations during his first year in office. "The press plays a stabilising role in democracies by channelling and giving structure to the debates taking place within society...