(MFWA/IFEX) - On 7April 2006, Ghana's deputy minister of Trade and Industry, Kofi Osei Ameyaw, filed a suit against "The Insight", a tri-weekly independent newspaper, and two other bi-weekly independent newspapers, "Ghana Palaver" and "Ghanaian Democrat", in an Accra High Court, for allegedly defaming him. The deputy minister is seeking damages of 2 billion Cedis (approx. US$225,000) and a court...
Islamabad - The family of a tribal journalist in Pakistan who disappeared in December said they fear he is in the custody of US forces. A brother of Hayatullah Khan has been meeting with military officials posted in the North Waziristan tribal region and the highest political officials in the North-Western Frontier Province (NWFP) who told him they could not help him find his brother because Khan...
These are dizzying times in Latin America by any standard. Across the continent, voters have elected left-leaning governments that are trimming back free-market policies, bolstering regional economic alliances and reawakening a concern for social justice. Leaders like Néstor Kirchner (Argentina), Tabaré Vázquez (Uruguay) and Hugo Chávez (Venezuela) represent a significant political shift in the...
Despite widespread acknowledgement that Ukraine’s media have become much freer since President Viktor Yushchenko came to power over a year ago, the United States plans to continue spending millions of dollars financing the development of independent journalism in the country. U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst told a conference in Kyiv April 10 that the U.S. will allocate $2.3 million to...
The South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) has endorsed a statement condemning the rising incidence of media repression in five African countries earlier this week. The fourth African Media Leadership Conference held in Nairobi, Kenya from April 4-7, was attended by leading media executives and editors from 12 African countries. They took the time to discuss the media situation in East...
New York, April 12, 2006–A third journalist from The Independent, a leading Gambian newspaper, was arrested at his home this afternoon, according to his colleagues. Reporter Lamin Fatty’s arrest follows that of Editor Musa Saidykhan and General Manager Madi Ceesay, who have been detained without charge since March 28. Fatty was the author of a story headlined "23 Coup Plotters’ Arrested," which...
(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has voiced concern about the fate of FM Liberté reporter Eliakim Vanambyl, who was captured by rebels of the United Front for Change (FUC) when they took the central city of Mongo on 11 April 2006. There has been no word of him since then. "Anyone who has reliable information about what has happened to Vanambyl is urged to get in touch with his family or...
(IPYS/IFEX) - On 5 April 2006, Marilu Gambini, a journalist for the programme "Confidencial" broadcast on TV channel 31, left the country with her two young children after having received another death threat on 28 March. The authorities have not yet identified the source of the threat. Gambini has been threatened and beaten several times because of her investigations into drug trafficking in...
New York, April 10, 2006 - Unidentified men beat Vladimir Katsman, the editor-in-chief of the Stolichniye Novosti (Capital News) publishing house, as he returned home in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on April 8, local and international press reported. "I definitely believe the attack was linked to my work," Katsman told the online newspaper Gazeta Po-Kyivsky from his hospital bed. Katsman said he had...
BRISTOL, England (UPI) -- The al-Jazeera effect, or the growing influence of satellite television news on public opinion, has unnerved many autocratic Arab governments, but the information revolution is not a sure-fire trigger of political reform in the region, experts say. 'Democratization is not an inevitable by-product of information and communication technology (ICT),' Dr. Emma Murphy, an...
