Censored

Officials shut down the office of the Association of Iranian Journalists in Tehran on Wednesday night, just after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Director Badr al-Sadat Mufidi, told the BBC Persian service that agents stormed the office with a warrant from Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran's prosecutor general. The...

Moroccan authorities banned two magazines from newsstands over the weekend after they published a poll about the 10-year reign of King Mohammed VI. Official MAP news agency said independent weeklies, Tel Quel, a French-language publication, and Nichane, an Arabic-language magazine, were seized for failing to respect the 1958 press code. Communications Minister Khalid Naciri told the Associated...

The Saudi Arabia offices of a Lebanon-based satellite station controlled by tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal could face closure over a racy talk show featuring a man boasting about his sex life, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has reported. The local operations of the Saudi billionaire's broadcaster LBC could be shut down because of the "offensive nature" of the programme, Abdullah al-Othaim, a senior...

The police in the city of Muzaffarabad barred journalists from entering the court room on July 27 to cover the case against three colleagues who had been accused of scandalising the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK). According to press reports, when media teams from Islamabad and other areas reached the court building, they saw a large contingent of police...

The interim government in Honduras has been maintaining a selective censorship of news in the country since the June 28 coup d’état. Media regarded as critical of President Roberto Micheletti are being systematically obstructed. The programming of Radio Globo, one of the few media still criticising the new regime, is often interrupted. Soldiers tried to force their way into its studios on July 25

The Democratic Republic of Congo government has shut down local FM retransmission of the French public radio station Radio France Internationale (RFI) throughout the country since July 26, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and Journalist in Danger (JED) have reported. JED has confirmed from various sources that RFI’s broadcasts on the FM waveband have been cut since July 26 in Kinshasa (the country...

Andhra Pradesh Assembly Speaker N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Thursday imposed restrictions on all live transmissions from the premises, except for the live telecast of the House proceedings, the Times of India reported. Addressing the media, a day before the start of the budget session, the Speaker said several regulations were put in place for the budget session by limiting visitors and media personnel...

After reporting 10 claims of women being raped since a new police chief came to the Turkish town of Diyarbakır, an issue of the Azadiya Welat newspaper was confiscated, IPS Communication Foundation (BIANET) has reported. The Diyarbakır 1st Criminal Court of Peace confiscated the July 8, 2009 issue of Azadiya Welat because it reported the claims of a 23-year-old woman who said she had been raped by...

The Propaganda Department to Chinese news media and news websites has censored reports about a corruption case with links to President Hu Jintao’s son and about the closure of a human rights law centre, according to Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The Propaganda Department’s readiness to suppress news is an insult to the rights of Chinese citizens to be informed about matters of...

The Yemeni government's crackdown on independent media now extended to satellite television stations, according to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI). Al-Jazeera was the first to be targeted after a ruling party official, Mossaad Allahbi, called for the closure of the local Al-Jazeera office for allegedly broadcasting news "hostile to the unity and security of Yemen." The...