Follow-up

The Court of Appeals (CA) in Manila has turned down a reconsideration motion filed by the president's spouse, Jose Miguel "Mike" Arroyo, to stop the hearing of the class suit filed against him by 36 journalists and three media organisations, the Manila-based Centre for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) has reported. On February 24, the CA's former Seventh Division affirmed its September 22...

The International Press Institute (IPI) has expressed concern about the pressure placed on news organisations by the weak rule of law and the perceived lack of judicial independence in Bangladesh. An IPI high-level mission, including the IPI director David Dadge, travelled to Bangladesh in late 2008 to meet top media and political figures. The mission found that impunity in the crimes against...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) welcomes the release of Al-Waha editor Nedjar El-Hadj Daoud Tuesday evening in the southern city of Ghardaïa, where he had been jailed on the morning of March 2. The Algiers-based daily El Watan said he was released from the city’s prison on medical grounds. “A commission tasked with executing the court ruling decided to suspend the detention order,” Nedjar told Al...

The Russian prosecutor-general’s office has filed an appeal before the supreme court against the acquittal of three men who were accused in connection with the 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya. A jury found the three men not guilty on February 19 at the end of a trial before a Moscow military court. “We point out that the Politkovskaya murder has not been solved,” Reporters...

Former journalist Jestina Mukoko, who was abducted by Zimbabwean security agents three months ago, has been released from prison. Mukoko was recently taken to a clinic in Harare, where she was treated for high blood pressure and injuries that doctors said were consistent with torture. “Mukoko was unjustly held for three months in very disturbing conditions,” Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said....

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has released two journalists in the West Bank on Monday, but yet another remains in custody, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The PA's Preventive Security Service freed Samer Khuaira, the Nablus correspondent for the London-based al-Quds TV station. Khuaira was arrested on January 24 after being summoned to the service's Nablus offices. He...

Brazil's Federal Supreme Court (STF) has made a "preliminary" decision to extend a suspension of 22 clauses—including 20 articles—of the draconian February 9, 1967 press law. The clauses at issue that allow prison sentences for offences of "defamation", "denigration" and "insult", were suspended for the first time for a period of six months, by the country's highest jurisdiction on February 27...

The Sudanese embassy in Cairo is said to have launched an extensive media campaign in Egyptian and Arab mass media in the wake of the release and distribution of the documentary Darfur Destroyed. The documentary, which was created by Aegis Trust and released on February 10, featured credible and documented testimonies and confessions of perpetrators of war crimes committed in Darfur, particularly

Journaliste en danger (JED) has applauded the February 19 release of Bwamputu Akienzin Zéphyrin, a correspondent for the public broadcaster RTNC in Bandundu province, western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Zéphyrin had been facing charges of making damaging allegations against a former RTNC director. A Bandundu court declared the charges pending against the journalist unfounded, acquitting...

China should open Tibetan areas to independent monitors and journalists as a means of diffusing ethnic tensions and preventing violence on the eve of a string of politically sensitive anniversaries, Human Rights Watch has demanded. One year after the largest Tibetan protests for more than two decades, the presence of such observers would serve as an incentive for good behavior for crowds, which...