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CUERNAVACA, Mexico – The general manager of a local newspaper was attacked by three unidentified assailants who warned him that he was a marked man. Eolo Pacheco Rodriguez, general manager of El Regional del Sur, in the central city of Cuernavaca, was dragged by three assailants into a truck and then beaten Wednesday afternoon, local news media reported. Before they let Pacheco go, the attackers...

Four Mexican journalists who were detained by soldiers during a drug raid were abused and assaulted during their detention. Crime reporter Sinhué Samaniego Osoria spoke to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Monday and detailed the abuse that he and three other reporters suffered during their arrest by soldiers last week in the northern state of Coahuila. Mexican soldiers patrol a highway

Two journalists of state-owned RadioTélévision Nationale Congolaise (RTNC) have been freed by a Kinshasa court after paying bail of $120 each. Vincent Hata and Michel Shango were arrested on July 26 for union activity and taken to the prosecutor’s office on August 8. A third RTNC journalist who was arrested with them, Eugène Risasi Ntambwe, was released on July 31. President Joseph Kabila

A court in the Guinean capital of Conakry has handed down suspended prison sentences to two private newspaper directors in connection with articles alleging corruption by a former government minister, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local journalists.. A man walks in an empty Conakry street in January 2007, following clashes with police forces. Over three million

NEW YORK, August 15, 2007— The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Cambodian government to launch an independent investigation into the recent arson attack on the home of Phan Phat, a journalist with the local Khmer language newspaper Chbas Kar. According to local press freedom groups and news reports, Phat’s wooden house was set ablaze by unknown assailants at around 4 a.m. on August 10...

With the government exerting severe repression, surviving as an independent newspaper in Zimbabwe has proven no easy feat, and the signing on 3 August of the Interception of Communications Law is only the latest of challenges. But in a country with an economy in shambles, economic challenges also have taken their toll. “The greatest challenge we face in advertising and marketing is the declining...

(IMI/IFEX) - On 13 August 2007, at 10:40 p.m. (local time), two unidentified persons attacked Artem Skoropadskiy, a journalist with "Commercant" newspaper, on the porch of his home. "On the dark porch, two unknown persons punched me in the face. After I kicked one of them in self-defence, they went away," Mr Skoropadskiy told the news agency Noviy Region (New Region). The assailants did not say a...

(CJES/IFEX) - A court of the town of Apatity, in Murmansk region, recently considered the issue of extending the treatment of journalist Larisa Arap in the Apatity psychiatric hospital. Despite the recommendation made by an independent psychiatric commission, which had come to Apatity from Moscow on the initiative of Russian human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin, the court ruled that Arap's...

(BIANET/IFEX) - Yakup Önal, of the local newspaper "Sarköy'ün Sesi" ("The Voice of Sarköy") in Sarköy, Tekirdag province, is on trial for allegedly "insulting" the Justice and Development Party (AKP) mayor and two members of the municipal council. The prosecution has demanded 10 years' imprisonment for Önal for insulting Mayor Can Gürsoy and municipal council members Olcay Yücel and Ercan Yücel in...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called again for defamation law reform in the Philippines, after the latest round of libel cases against journalists threaten to suffocate the country’s freedom of expression. According to IFJ affiliate, the National Union of Philippines (NUJP), a libel suit worth PHP 30 million was filed by Filipino boxer and International Super Featherweight...