Harassed

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed concern over the way authorities in Burundi are treating two journalists employed by the newspaper Iwacu, Elyse Ngabire and Dieudonné Hakizimana, who were arrested for unknown reasons on November 5, held incommunicado for 48 hours and released at noon Sunday. They have been told to appear before Bujumbura police chief...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned Wednesday's arbitrary arrest of journalist Gafar Alsabki Ibrahim during a raid by intelligence officials on the independent newspaper Alsahafa. They took him away to an unknown location after making him surrender his mobile phone and preventing him from alerting his family. No reason was given for his arrest. The press...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Gabonese authorities to free a journalist who was jailed on Tuesday for failing to pay exorbitant damages stemming from a 2004 civil libel suit. Jean-Yves Ntoutoume, editor of the private bimonthly Le Temps, was imprisoned over his newspaper's failure to pay 10 million CFA francs (US $20,000) in damages to Albert Méyé, a former treasurer of...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has urged the Radio and TV Supreme Council (RTÜK) in Turkey to drop the prosecution it has brought against Kanal D, a privately-owned TV station critical of the government, for broadcasting the reactions of the families of ten soldiers who were killed in an ambush by members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The station...

Pakistan must take immediate steps to rein in police and government agencies that threaten reporters. Two cases in recent days—those of journalists Hafiz Imran and Umar Cheema—demonstrate how reporting on stories that are critical of the authorities can bring officials' wrath down on reporters. "It's deeply disturbing to hear that journalists are receiving death threats under Pakistan's new...

CPJ is concerned by Vietnamese authorities' recent crackdown against several bloggers and one print journalist. On Monday, police arrested Phan Thanh Hai, a blogger who writes under the name Anh Ba Saigon (Saigon Brother Three), after raiding his Ho Chi Minh City home, according to Agence France-Presse. Police seized his desktop and laptop computers, along with documents he had printed from the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Iranian authorities to immediately disclose the names of two Germans who were arrested on Sunday and described as journalists in several news reports. CPJ also asked Iranian officials to clarify the circumstances surrounding the arrests of the two individuals and to state what, if any, charges were filed against them. The head of the German...

Iran has decided to expel Tehran-based journalist Ángeles Espinosa, the correspondent of the Spanish daily El País. The authorities cancelled her residence permit on October 10 and gave her two weeks to leave Iran, where she has been an accredited journalist for the past five years. No explanation was given. Espinosa’s press card was withdrawn when she was arrested in Qom in July after...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed concern over the unprecedented harassment of Chiranuch Premchaipoen, the editor of the Prachatai news website. Detained at Bangkok airport on September 24, on her return from an international conference, she has been told she was arrested on a warrant issued in the northeastern city of Khon Kaen in September 2009 in...

Radio Kapisa FM director Hojatullah Mujadadi is still being held by the National Directorate of Security (NDS) in Kabul, although both Afghan officials and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) announced on September 24 that he had been released. “My son is still being held by the security forces,” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) was told by...