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(APG/IFEX) - The APG has asked the attorney general's ministry (Ministerio Público) to file a special appeal of the court ruling which resulted in the release of two police (Policía National Civil) officers who assaulted and threatened two "Nuestro Diario" newspaper reporters. The assault had occurred on 31 August 2004, during a violent eviction of peasants, carried out by government security...

New York, May 9, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by attacks on radio stations in the Comoros in the run-up to May 14 federal elections in the Indian Ocean state. Unidentified assailants armed with machetes stormed two radio stations on the island of Grande Comore on May 5, forcing them off the air for 24 hours. The army shut down a radio station on the island of Mohéli...

(New York, May 10, 2006) - Egyptian security officials arrested 11 more political reform activists, including an award-winning blogger, Alaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam, Human Rights Watch said today. This brings to more than 100 the number of people detained over the past two weeks for exercising their rights to freedom of assembly and expression. Approximately half of those arrested are members of the...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has welcomed the withdrawal of Shin Corp's defamation suit against media activist Supinya Klangnarong in Thailand, saying that it further highlights the futility of using outdated laws to curb press freedoms. Shin Corp filed a civil defamation case claiming 400 million baht (over US$10 million) in damages against Supinya and Thai Post editors after...

10 May 2006 - Today, ARTICLE 19 releases an analysis of the Maldives Freedom of Press Bill against international standards on freedom of expression. The analysis concludes that while the Bill contains some positive safeguards for freedom of expression, these are outweighed by numerous broad and vaguely worded restrictions that may be abused to control the media. The Bill needs to be amended to...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has expressed concern over the validity of recent figures released by the Philippine National Police (PNP) which claim the majority of cases of media murders have been solved. According to IFJ affiliate, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), there have been 76 cases of media killings since 1986, 40 of which have occurred in...

New York, May 9, 2006 - Despite domestic and international pressure for reform, government and religious authorities in Saudi Arabia employ a wide array of behind-the-scenes controls to curtail coverage of sensitive religious and political news. Writers are routinely blacklisted, editors dismissed, and news blacked out, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in a new report. Religious...

9 May 2006 - Members of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange's (IFEX) Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG) are deeply concerned that, despite its unrelenting attacks on press freedom, free expression and freedom of association, the Tunisian government today became a member of the newly established UN Human Rights Council. "The UN Human Rights Council may soon lose its credibility if it is...

PRAGUE, May 9, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Zokirov was an eight-year veteran with RFE/RL's Uzbek Service when a rebel uprising triggered the chain of events that led to the massacre by authorities of hundreds of demonstrators on Andijon's main square. He'd been filing reports from the nearby city of Namangan, in the fertile and densely populated Ferghana Valley. He is convinced that his work led to...

(IPYS/IFEX) - On 1 May 2006, Associated Press photographer Santiago Llanquín and Danny Alveal, a photographer for the newspaper "Las Últimas Noticias", were wounded by persons while they were covering a march organized by the workers' union Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) to commemorate May Day in Santiago de Chile. According to witnesses, the aggression resulted from the fact that...