Harassed

Hakimeldostu Mehdiyev, the correspondent of the Institute for Reporter Freedom and Safety (IRFS) in Sharur, in the north of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, has been charged by the district prosecutor’s office with “diverting electricity” under article 189-1 of the criminal code. Sanan Pashayev, the official in charge of the investigation, made Mehdiyev signed an undertaking that he would not...

Harassment of the independent newspapers Narodnaya Volya and Nasha Niva continues despite last month’s withdrawal of a legal bid to have them closed. They have each been fined 14 million roubles (2,000 euros) for the warnings they had received from the information ministry in recent months. Narodnaya Volya has said it intends to appeal. “Two weeks after giving the two newspapers encouraging signs...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned last week’s seizure of all 40,000 copies of Izvestia Kaliningrada, a weekly published in Russia’s western exclave of Kaliningrad. It was the latest example of regional governors abusing their power to silence media that annoy them. “We are disturbed to see this form of censorship used more than once in a short space of...

There has been a series of attacks, threats and demonstrations since mid-June targeting the Agence France-Presse bureau in Amman and its chief, Randa Habib, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The protests against AFP in Amman have taken a disturbing turn, with the demonstrators using threats and violence,” RSF said. “Intimidation attempts of this kind...

Hakimeldostu Mehdiyev, a correspondent of the Institute for Reporters Freedom and Safety (IRFS) in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, has repeatedly been harassed by officials for the past week. It is the latest example of the intolerance that the local authorities show towards the media in Nakhchivan, an Azerbaijani exclave between Armenia and Iran, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...

There has been a sharp decline in relations between the government and the media in Senegal amid a wave of protests against President Abdoulaye Wade, who announced on July 14 in Dakar that he planned to “keep hold of the helm come hell or high water.” Harassment of the Walfadjri media group has intensified in the past month or so. Four journalists with the daily Walfadjri l’Aurore were summoned to...

Cuban authorities are waging a campaign to intimidate Hablemos Press, a Havana-based independent news centre, presumably because of its criticism of the government. In the past three months, 14 of its correspondents have been threatened and 10 have been briefly detained on at least one occasion, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). According to Hablemos...

Salama Atallah, the Gaza Strip correspondent of the French TV news station France 24’s Arabic service, was interrogated by Hamas security officials on June 26 for the fourth time in a month over a report he did for the service about a clandestine Salafist group operating in Gaza. Dubbed “Palestine’s Taliban,” the group is believed to have been responsible for the April 15 murder of Italian peace...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the disgraceful way the authorities are harassing and prosecuting journalists in Khartoum and the north of the country in an attempt to silence them and stop embarrassing revelations about human rights violation by the security forces. “While the international community and media have their attention turned to South...

Kyrgyz parliament adopted a resolution June 16 issuing a legally binding instruction to the prosecutor-general’s office, culture ministry and justice ministry to block access to the independent online news agency Ferghana ( www.ferghananews.com) because of its coverage of last year’s violence in the south of the country. “Blocking access to Ferghana would constitute a very shocking attack on one...