Censored

Press freedom groups have condemned the seizure of the print run of one of the few remaining independent newspapers in Kazakhstan, which is set to take control of a leading security and human rights organization. The country will become chair of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe in 2010. On Friday last, court officers in the financial capital Almaty confiscated the entire...

The government-run Uganda Broadcasting Council effectively shut down four radio stations today and Thursday, and ordered all radio stations to halt political debate programming in the wake of violent clashes in the capital, Kampala, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Violence erupted after the government attempted to block the king of the Buganda ethnic group, Ronald Muwenda...

A Ljubljana District Court has rejected Slovene daily Dnevnik's appeal against a temporary injunction that stops the paper reporting on an Italian businessman's alleged involvement in a corruption scandal, the International Press Institute (IPI) has reported. The injunction, which carries fines of up to €500,000 for failure to comply, relates to articles printed in Dnevnik on July 29 in which the...

The Indian government has reportedly refused to issue a press visa to Hasnain Kazim, a German journalist of Indian origin, so that he can base himself in India as the German weekly Der Spiegel's correspondent. Indian diplomats have acknowledged verbally to German officials that the failure to approve the visa request he made five months ago is linked to the fact that his articles are regarded as...

Kuwaiti information minister, Al-Sheikh Ahmad Abdallah al-Sabah, has suspended privately-owned Scope TV’s political satire programme Sawtak Wasal after only three of an initially-scheduled series of 15 programmes had been broadcast, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The 20-minute programme, consisting of sketches that satirized Kuwaiti politicians, had been referred by the government...

Rangoon-based weekly Phoenix has been closed down for an indefinite perdiod by the military government’s censorship board, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and the Burma Media Association (BMA) have reported. The weekly is edited by Mar-J, a writer who has been subject to bans in the past for his satirical comments. The authorities have not given any specific reason for Phoenix’s closure. Mizzima...

A Vietnamese reporter, Huy Duc, has been dismissed by the governmental daily Sai Gon Tiep Thi for posting criticism of the Cold War-era Soviet Union on his personal blog, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). One of the newspaper’s editors, Tran Cong Khanh, said Huy Duc was fired on August because of what he had posted online. Huy Duc confirmed in his blog that he had been dismissed and...

The Gabonese government indulged in censorship and imposed restrictions on media coverage of Sunday's presidential elections, including denials of accreditation to at least four international journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Three front-runners have emerged in the fiercely contested election to determine a successor to Omar Bongo, who died in June after a 41...

The US military is cancelling a contract with a public relations firm after coming under flak for using the company to rate the output of journalists reporting on the Afghanistan war, a Pentagon spokesman has said. "The Bagram Regional Contracting Center intends to execute a termination of the media analyst contract ... for the convenience of the US government," military spokesperson Lieutenant...

An Istanbul criminal court has ordered the closure, for one month, of Günlük newspaper – which is known for raising issues related to Turkey’s Kurdish minority - over an article considered by the court to constitute propaganda for a terrorist organisation. The article was published earlier this month. The verdict, handed down on August 22, did not specify why the article was deemed to be of a...