Abducted

There has been an increase in threats and acts of intimidation against journalists in the southwestern port city of Karachi. Two TV reporters, Syed Shahryar Asim of Aaj TV and Malik Munawar of Channel 5, have been attacked in connection with their work in the past 10 days alone. “We urge the authorities to break the cycle of violence and impunity by investigating both of these cases thoroughly...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) continues to be very concerned about the repression to which journalists have been exposed in Yemen since the start of a wave of street protests. In the past few days, journalists have been arrested, media have been attacked and newspapers have been confiscated. Journalist Ali Salah Ahmed was arrested Tuesday evening at Sana'a airport...

Saad Al-Awsi, the editor of weekly Al-Shahid Al-Mustaqil (The Independent Witness), was abducted by gunmen on March 25 from Rusafa prison in southeastern Baghdad where he was serving a one-year sentence, according to delayed reports. His family, which has received no news of him since his disappearance, wrote a letter on April 3 to Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and to the head of the intelligence...

Mohammad Rafique Baloch, the vice-president of the Karachi Union of Journalists (KUJ), was abducted Monday in south Karachi and held for several hours. He was on his way to Karachi’s high court to defend pay and working conditions of journalists in Sindh province at a hearing initiated by the KUJ when the incident took place. It is quite clear that the aim of the attackers was to prevent him from...

Four Sana'a-based foreign journalists – two American and two British – who were on Monday detained by police at the apartment they shared in Sana'a’s old quarter, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The two Britons are Oliver Holmes, who strings for the Wall Street Journal and Time, and Portia Walker, who strings for the Washington Post. The Americans are...

Gunmen staged separate attacks on a TV station and a radio station in Torreón, in the northern state of Coahuila on February 9, killing a young engineer, Rodolfo Ochoa, in the attack on Canal 9 (Milenio TV), which is owned by the Multimedios Laguna group. Equipment was destroyed in the attack on the radio station, Radiorama, which has been off the air ever since, according to Paris-based press...

Ecuadoran authorities must fully investigate a vicious attack Tuesday against Ecuadoran sports reporter Guido Manolo Campaña, who was abducted, beaten, and threatened while on assignment in the northern coastal province of Esmeraldas, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged. Two gunmen seized Campaña, a reporter for the Guayaquil-based daily El Universo, from a bus that was en route...

Two incidents in recent weeks have again highlighted the dangers for journalists in Pakistan. One is the detention of Ghulam Rasool Khan in the eastern province of Punjab without due process since November 3. The other is the disappearance of Abdul Hameed Hayatan, also known as Lala Hameed, in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where his colleagues think he was abducted by security...

Two TV employees have been killed in Quetta and an investigative journalist has been abducted in Islamabad. A cameraman and a TV station driver were killed and six other journalists seriously injured in a suicide bombing on September 3 in Quetta and the ensuing acts of revenge violence by demonstrators who were targeted by the bombing. The overall death toll was 59. In Islamabad, an investigative...

Four journalists were on Monday abducted by a criminal group in Mexico's Laguna region, which includes Durango and areas of the neighbouring state of Coahuila, according to delayed reports. The group’s members have demanded press coverage of videos they made in exchange for the reporters’ release, according to international and local news reports. Media reports named the journalists as Jaime...