Reporters Without Borders voiced deep concern today about the fate of Eyob Kessete, a journalist with the Amharic-language service of public radio station Dimtsi Hafash, who was arrested as he tried to flee across the border into Ethiopia and has since been held in the May Srwa detention centre, north of Asmara. “The Eritrean government is not evolving, and those who do not toe the single party...
(SEAPA/IFEX) - The Cambodian government has banned a report by a London-based environmental watchdog that accuses Prime Minister Hun Sen and top government officials, as well as their relatives and cronies, of plundering the country's forests through illegal logging. On 5 June 2007, government officials seized copies of the report and accused Global Witness, the organisation which produced it, of...
Despite the government’s claims to the contrary, Yemen’s press is still struggling against confining shackles, said a new report on press freedom issued by Freedom House, an independent nongovernmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that supports the expansion of freedom in the world. The new report gives Yemen a mark of 80 out of 100, which is considered a low mark, said the report. The...
Reporters Without Borders energetically condemns the sentence of a year in prison or “optional” fine of 1,850 dollars (1,375 euros) which a magistrate’s court in the town of Kanifing today imposed on reporter Lamin Fatty for getting facts wrong in a story for the now banned, privately-owned biweekly The Independent. “Fatty was already held illegally for two months in this case,” the press freedom...
(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, June 5, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on prosecutors in the Kazakh financial capital, Almaty, to rescind their decision to close the Web sites of the weekly newspaper Karavan and the online news agency Kazakhstan Today. On Monday, the prosecutor general ordered the indefinite closure of Karavan's Web site for a May 18 article headlined "Chronicle of...
(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has welcomed amendments to the press and publications law that were approved on 28 May 2007 by the Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Council), the upper house of the Bahraini parliament. If the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, approves the amendments, press offences will no longer be punishable by imprisonment. "Three years ago, the lower house rejected an...
(MFWA/IFEX) - Abdel Fettah Ould Abeidna, managing editor of "Al-Aqsa", a daily Arabic-language newspaper, was granted bail on 28 May 2007 by a Nouakchott court after spending four days in prison for allegedly defaming a businessman, Mohamed Ould Bouammatou. The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) correspondent reported that the journalist had been granted bail to allow for further...
(CEMESP/IFEX) - Information Minister Dr. Laurence Bropleh announced the lifting of the ban when he addressed journalists on 30 May 2007. The government, on 27 February, revoked the operational permit of the "Independent" after it published a photograph showing President Ellen Sirleaf's then chief of office staff Willis Knuckles engaging in group sex with two ladies. Announcing the lifting of the...
(IAPA/IFEX) - MIAMI, Florida (June 4, 2007) - The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) said today that it will keep a close watch on the legal battle between private and state shareholders of the Ecuadorean newspaper El Telégrafo in the hope that the dispute will be conducted transparently and according to due process. Carlos Navarette Castillo, the paper's editor since 2002 and a descendant of...
(HRinfo/IFEX) - The Tunisian government must respect the rule of law and terminate the house arrest imposed on the journalist and prisoner of opinion Abdallah Al-Zawary for five years, said the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo). Al-Zawary has been under house arrest since June 2002. After spending 11 years in prison, Al-Zawary had been released in June 2002. Immediately upon his...
