Censored

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has written to Rwandan information minister Louise Mushikiwabo expressing deep concern about the “temporary suspension” of BBC broadcasts in the local language Kinyarwanda because of comments about the 1994 genocide which Rwandan citizens made in one of these broadcasts. “We are aware that the genocide continues to be a highly sensitive subject in your country and...

As part of its declaration of a state of emergency on Sunday, the Thai government issued a decree that empowered officials to censor news considered a threat to national security, according to international and local news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the government to immediately rescind this order of censorship. On Monday, the government ordered the blocking...

Fiji's interim government must relax its reporting restrictions after the government declared a 30-day state of emergency on Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists has demanded. Three foreign reporters have since been ordered to be deported and one local journalist detained, according to international news reports, and newspapers and broadcasts have been censored. Australian Sean Dorney and...

Authorities in Republic of Congo should immediately lift their ban on private TV station Canal Bénédiction Plus (CB Plus), the Committee to Protect Journalists has said. The ban was enacted in February in response to political coverage in the lead-up to presidential elections in July. CB Plus was forced off the air on February 12 shortly after it aired footage of a 1991 national political...

The Algerian government has decided to ban the distribution of the current issues of three French publications – L'Express, Marianne and Journal du Dimanche – on the eve of the April 9, 2009 election (where the President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is running for the third term), Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported.. "This censorship is disgraceful," Paris-based RSF said, expressing outrage at...

China's inconsistency in applying its own new rules and regulations for non-mainland journalists amounts to obstacle-setting in which bureaucrats continue to restrict reporting regardless of government edicts, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has said. According to local media reports, officers of the Sichuan provincial government sought to bar journalists from entering...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ ) has condemned the timing of the Senegalese government's announcement that private broadcasters faced closure for nonpayment of licenses fees made on March 22, which was also local elections day in the country. "It is extraordinary for the goverment to make a statement directly threatening the closure of certain private media on the most important...

Three-month bans have been imposed on two opposition party newspapers in Malaysia— Suara Keadilan of the Keadilan party and Harakah of the Islamic party PAS—just days ahead of Najib Razak’s expected installation as Malaysia’s new prime minister on March 28. The two newspapers were notified of the bans in fax messages that gave no reason, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “There is...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for the release of the manager of the Poobalasingam Book Depot bookshop in Colombo, who was arrested by anti-terrorism police at his home in the Colombo suburb of Wellawatte on March 5 for sending copies of Ananda Vikatan, a Tamil weekly magazine published in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, to another branch of the same bookshop in Jaffna, in the...

Journalists were barred on March 4 from covering the proceedings of senate elections from the press gallery of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Assembly, the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) has reported. Security officials stopped journalists from entering the assembly hall soon after the polling began. The outraged journalists shouted slogans and staged a sit-in outside the main entrance...