Attacked

A French reporter was stabbed Saturday last at a hotel in Iraq's northern Kurdish city of Irbil, police said. The reporter was hospitalised with minor injuries to her arm, according to Irbil police chief Brig Gen Abdul-Khaliq Talat. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemned the attack on Cécile Hennion, a reporter working for Le Monde. “This brazen attack shows how dangerous the...

The Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of 18 member organisations of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) network, are appalled at the treatment of human rights activists Sihem Bensedrine and Omar Mestiri upon their arrival in Tunisia on March 3. Bensedrine is Secretary-General Observatory for the Freedom of Press, Publishing and Creation in Tunisia (OLPEC), IFEX's...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned two physical attacks on journalists on February 27 that seem to be linked to their coverage of a December incident in which Labour Minister Mervyn Silva stormed into the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC), a state-owned television station, and assaulted its news director. “Physical attacks and acts of intimidation against SLRC journalists for...

Officers of the Liberia National Police assigned to the provincial city of Tubmanburg in Liberia's Bomi county on Saturday last flogged and briefly detained a journalist in capital Monrovia. Edwin Clarke of Truth FM Radio, who had gone to Tubmanburg to follow up on a news story regarding a stolen child, was ordered beaten by the commander of the Women and Child Protection unit of the Liberian...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the “ban” imposed on a daily newspaper, Asomiya Protidin, by a political party in Assam. According to information received from an IFJ affiliate, the Indian Journalists’ Union (IJU), armed vigilantes belonging to the Bodo People’s Front (BPF), intercepted a delivery van belonging to the newspaper on February 25 in Kokrajhar...

NDTV's office in Ahmedabad was on Saturday smashed by hockey stick-wielding activists of a right wing Hindu fundamentalist group, the channel reported. The Shiv Sena, which has been involved in similar attacks elsewhere, denied that it was involved in any way. Members of the Hindu Samrajya Sena group forced their way in and beat two employees with hockey sticks and steel pipes. They broke all the...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today called on Tanzanian authorities to launch a thorough investigation into the brutal assault of two veteran journalists while they were working in their newsroom. Saed Kubenea, owner and managing editor of the Kiswahili weekly Mwana Halisi, and Ndimara Tegambwage, a consultant editor with the paper, were assaulted by multiple attackers on...

Press freedom organisations have called for the prompt dismissal of Sri Lanka’s Labour Minister, Mervyn Silva, following his physical and verbal abuse of officials of the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC). According to news reports, Dr Silva assaulted SLRC’s news director, TMG Chandrasekara, at the premises of Sri Lanka’s main public television broadcaster on December 27, 2007. The assault...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has expressed concern over reports from the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA) about a series of attacks against journalists. According to the IFJ-AIJA project office, unidentified gunmen in two cars chased a producer with Afghanistan Radio Television (ART), Ali Asghar Akbarzada, as he drove home from work on December 3. The...

The Sri Lanka military air strike last week on the Voice of Tigers, the radio station of the Tamil Tiger rebels in the north of the country, is being described as a war crime. Three of the station’s staff, who had not been given any warning, and six other civilians were killed in the bombardment by air force jets. "Voice of Tigers is a propaganda radio operated by the LTTE rebels, but the rules