Harassed

Kuwaiti authorities have detained freelance opposition journalist Mohammed Abdulqader al-Jassem since Sunday on charges of “instigating to overthrow the regime,” “slight to the personage of the emir” and “instigating to dismantle the foundations of Kuwaiti society,” the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Al-Jassem is facing multiple charges in five other complaints and was...

A raid was conducted in Madagascar Saturday on the opposition radio station Fréquence Plus that resulted in the arrest of an opposition leader while he was on a live radio programme, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local journalists. The soldiers injured three journalists and destroyed the station’s equipment in 67 Hectares, a district in the capital, Antananarivo...

A Canadian supreme court decision ordering the Toronto-based National Post newspaper to surrender documents pointing to a conflict of interest in a loan that a state-owned bank gave to a friend of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is being seen as a deterrent for confidentiality of sources. The ruling, issued on May 7, jeopardises the protection of sources, a fundamental principle without which...

The climate continues to be very oppressive for Palestinian journalists, who are still subject to arrests, physical attacks and searches as a result of tension between the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). In one of the latest incidents, Samer Rwayched, a correspondent of Sawt Al-Aqsa (a radio station linked...

Three Palestinian press photographers have been arrested and two others physically attacked by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank since the start of April, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). In the latest incident, an Israeli soldier fired a tear-gas grenade at Muammar Jamil Awad, a photographer with the Palestinian news agency Wafa, while he was covering the weekly protest in Beit Jala...

The Ethiopian government detained last week two government TV journalists on allegations of misusing state property, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Editor Haileyesus Worku and reporter Abdulsemed Mohammed of Ethiopian Radio and Television Agency (ERTA) have not been formally charged since their arrests, according to local journalists. Friday, a magistrate extended their...

Soldiers stormed the building of 14 October, a national media company based in Al-Ma’ala, in the southern Yemen province of Aden, on the evening of April 21 in order to seize the latest issue of Al-Tariq, a daily newspaper it publishes, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The building remained surrounded until Thursday morning. “What happens in Yemen is hallucinating,” Paris-based RSF...

Members of the Kyrgyz counter-espionage service temporarily overran the office of independent news agency 24.kg in Bishkek on April 15, eight days after the revolt that toppled President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Journalists said armed men, led by Aspekov Talant, the head of the service, stormed into the office and, without giving any reason, announced that...

The Kiev police have stepped up their attempts to harass and intimidate journalist and blogger Olena Bilozerska in connection with her coverage of a demonstration outside an animal fur store in February, in which smoke grenades and eggs with paint were thrown at the store, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). When she was interrogated again on April 13 by a police inspector, he was...

Authorities in the unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) are holding for treason journalist Ernest Vardanian in the regional capital of Tiraspol since April 7, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Vardanian is being held in an isolation unit and without officially stated charges, according to news reports. On April 9, at a closed-door hearing at the Tiraspol City...