Uncategorised

Portugal President Anibal Cavaco Silva has vetoed the new Journalist Statute which threatened journalists’ rights to protect their sources and undermined their authors’ rights. The Portuguese Union of Journalists just started a protest action against Portuguese media group Controlinvest who, anticipating the effects of the law, announced the publication from September of a free newspaper made

Freelance Uzbek journalist Jamshid Karimov, being held against his will in a psychiatric hospital since September 2006, has reported in a message smuggled out to friends that his health is declining and he attributes this to the psychotropic drugs he is being given and the harassment to which he is being subjected. He has complained of memory loss, difficulty concentrating and a partial loss of

An Eritrean editor with state-owned Eri-TV who attempted to flee his country's regime has gone missing since trying to slip over the dangerous border to Ethiopia in May. Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) voiced concern Monday about the fate of Johnny Hisabu, an editor with state-owned Eri-TV, who disappeared in late May after trying to flee across the border into Ethiopia. There are unconfirmed

(AMARC/IFEX) - AMARC strongly condemns the Colombian government's decision to violate freedom of expression and information by imposing prior censorship, through restricting in an arbitrary and unconstitutional manner community media's right to cover various electoral proposals, conduct interviews and promote debates between the different political parties. In a 9 August 2007 government press...

LONDON: Mike Soutar refuses to say who or what will be featured on the cover of Short List, a new men's magazine he is introducing next month in Britain, but one thing seems certain: If it is a female model, she will wear at least a bit of clothing. "No nudity, no profanity," said Soutar, a former top executive at IPC, a British magazine unit of Time Warner, who now heads a group of investors...

MOSCOW -- A popular Kazakhstan newspaper owned by the former son-in-law of President Nursultan Nazarbayev was forced to close last week, its editors said, and was replaced with a new, similarly styled weekly run by a man close to the president. The switch is the latest chapter in a murky family feud that has brought Kazakhstan's commitment to democracy under increasing foreign criticism. Several...

A respected freelance photojournalist in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was gunned down by unidentified men in army uniforms on Thursday evening as he returned home from covering a local conference on environmental protection. Patrick Kikuku Wilungula was a freelance photojournalist working in Goma in eastern DRC for national news agency Agence Congolaise de Presse (ACP) and Kinshasa-based

Two top Somali journalists were killed on Saturday — one shot dead outside his office and the other when a landmine exploded as he returned from his colleague's funeral. Six journalists have been killed in Somalia in the past year. Here is a chronology of attacks on journalists in Somalia since a battle between Islamists and the government began in June 2006. 2006: June 1: Somali journalist

New York, August 10, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release this afternoon of four Mexican journalists who had been detained on Tuesday night by the army while covering a drug raid. Charges of possession of a firearm and marijuana are still pending against them. The reporters told their lawyer that the weapon and drugs were planted and that the soldiers had beaten them....

(BIANET/IFEX) - Journalist Ayse Önal of the "Star" newspaper has been sentenced to three months imprisonment and payment of compensation to Kemal Kerincsiz, a lawyer with of the Great Lawyer's Union, after he filed a suit against her. Her imprisonment has been converted into a fine. Önal has been sentenced to paying Kerincsiz compensation by a penal court in Istanbul for "insulting" him. The...