Follow-up

Musa Saidykhan, who was detained for three weeks in 2006 by Gambian state security agents, was tortured and must receive compensation, a West African regional court ruled on Thursday. Saidykhan, editor-in-chief of the now-banned private biweekly The Independent, was detained for 22 days without charge by the Gambian National Intelligence Agency (NIA) during a brutal government crackdown following...

Human rights lawyer and free speech defender Nasrin Sotoudeh has now been held for more than 100 days in Iran. She began her third hunger strike last week and is resolved to continue it until the end, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Shirin Ebadi, Nobel peace laureate and president of the Tehran-based Centre for Human Rights Defenders, Jean-François...

Government officials responsible for the sudden suspension of senior news editor Dorah Masseung from her management position at the Papua New Guinea National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) must let the national media do its work without fear or political pressure, according to the Pacific Freedom Forum (PFF). Masseung, the executive news director for NBC, was "relieved" of her duties on December...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has demanded an immediate investigation into the death of Mohammad Khan Sasoli, who was shot dead in Khuzdar, Balochistan province, in Pakistan's south-west, on December 14. Sasoli, a correspondent with Daily Balochistan Times and DawnNews TV, and president of the Khuzdar Press Club, is the sixth journalist to be reported killed in Balochistan this...

Ukraine’s administrative supreme court has begun examining the appeals of privately-owned TV stations TVi and 5 Kanal against the withdrawal of their over-the-air broadcast frequencies and licences, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. TVi and 5 Kanal are appealing against a June 8 decision by a Kiev administrative court stripping them of their frequencies...

The Chinese authorities refuse to say what has become of journalist and human rights activist Hada, who should have been released from Inner Mongolia’s Chifeng prison on December 10 on completing a 15-year jail sentence. There has also been no direct word from his wife Xinna and his son Uiles, who were arrested 10 days ago. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called...

On the sixth anniversary of leading Gambian journalist Deyda Hydara’s still unsolved murder, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has appealed to the authorities to stop obstructing an independent investigation and urges President Yahya Jammeh to liberalize the country’s media legislation by repealing the laws that were adopted in 2004. Hydara’s murder on December 16...

Press freedom groups have condemned the government’s closure of the Kuwait City bureau of the Doha-based satellite TV station Al-Jazeera for covering police use of force to disperse an unauthorised demonstration at Soulaibikhat, 10 km from the city centre, on December 8. “This closure violates the legal procedures and regulations in force in Kuwait,” Paris-based press Reporters sans Frontières...

It's the 12th anniversary of newspaper editor Norbert Zongo’s murder. But Burkina Faso authorities are still stalling an investigation into his death. “How is it possible that the investigation into Zongo’s death is still paralysed,” asks Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) secretary-general Jean-François Julliard. “The years are passing but the wound left by this

Radio presenter Francisco Gomes de Medeiros' murder on October 18 in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte was carried out on the orders of a jailed drug trafficker, according to a report in the Diário de Natal daily newspaper on December 3, quoting the local police. Valdir Souza do Nascimento, who was arrested in 2007 and is now serving a sentence for drug trafficking in Alcaçuz prison...