Harassed

Timothy Kalyegira, a former Daily Monitor columnist and current publisher of an online newspaper, Tuesday became the first Ugandan to face sedition charges arising from the use of new media, the Daily Monitor has reported. Police on Monday summoned Kalyegira to appear for interrogation over reports that questioned whether it was really the Somali-based militants, the al-Shabaab, that bombed and...

The police prevented the staff of the opposition newspaper Azadlig from entering its premises Monday at the behest of Agbey Askerov, the head of the state-owned publishing house Azerbaijan, which prints the newspaper, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Askerov is demanding immediate repayment of a debt of 15,000 manats (15,000 euros), which he says dates...

Charles Atangana, a Cameroonian journalist who has been living in the UK since 2004, is facing deportation after losing his case for asylum. He believes he will be killed if he returns to Cameroon. UK's National Union of Journalists is trying to stop Glasgow-based Atangana from being deported to Cameroon where he is likely to face detention, torture or worse. The union has temporarily stopped the...

The Federation of African Journalists (FAJ) has expressed concern at the growing tendency towards enactment and enforcement of more repressive, complicated legal sanctions against journalists. In Senegal, Cameroon, Tunisia and Burundi, journalists and their leaders face constant harassment and threats to their safety as part of a brazen campaign to curb the right to freedom of expression in Africa...

Tunisian authorities have in the past few days stepped up their harassment of journalists who dare to criticise the government and defend freedom of expression. Poet and journalist Taoufik Ben Brik has been under house arrest for the past few days, after writing two articles for the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur about Tunisia’s police state. A permanent cordon of plain-clothes police is...

Elena Kostyuchenko, a reporter for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and Yury Timofeyev, a reporter for Prague-based Radio Liberty, were arrested while covering the violent dispersal of environmentalists who had camped out at Khimki forest, north of Moscow, in an attempt to prevent part of it being torn down, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Kostyuchenko and Timofeyev were taken to a...

Presidential Administration guards in Azerbaijan on Tuesday detained photographers covering a demonstration over flood relief measures, according to Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety (IRFS). IRFS and Turan Information Agency employees Javid Gurbanov and Mehman Huseynov, Radio Liberty correspondent Abbas Atilay and "Bizim Yol" newspaper correspondent Haji Zeynalov were detained by the...

Two Norwegian journalists are facing trespassing charges after they were arrested snapping photos of the New York estate where Chelsea Clinton is expected to get married, says Huffington Post. Thomas Bjorn Nilsson, 43, of New York, and Kjerste Sortland, 41, of Snorova, Norway, were charged with a violation after they were stopped around 2 p.m. Wednesday on the Astor Estate in this picturesque town...

The editor of Tamil daily Dina Bhoomi, S Manimaran, his son M Rameshkumar and associate M Muthiah, who were arrested in Madurai on Wednesday for publishing news on granite quarries in the Madurai region, were released on Thursday, the Hindu has reported. When the bail application came up before the Judicial Magistrate, Madurai Court, the prosecution did not oppose it. A senior government official...

Iran has detained two more journalists, according to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Abdolreza Tajik, who writes for reformist newspapers in Iran including Fath, Bonyan, Bahar, and Shargh, was arrested on June 12. Tajik's sister told US government-backed Farsi-language Radio Farda that her brother was arrested after being summoned to Tehran’s Intelligence Ministry. After a month of not...