Harassed

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the way that Hata Wahari, the president of the National Union Of Journalists Malaysia (NUJ), is being treated by his newspaper, the Kuala Lumpur-based daily Utusan Malaysia. The newspaper is owned by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), a political party that has played a dominant role in Malaysia since...

Amangelen Shapudakov, an 80-year-old activist, has been confined to a psychiatric hospital after accusing a local government official of corruption in an interview for Radio Azatlyq, the Turkmen-language service of Radio Free Europe (RFE), one of the few independent media still operating in Turkmenistan. “The inhuman and arbitrary way that Shapudakov is being treated is new evidence of this...

As pro-democracy protests gain pace in Azerbaijan, the regime is cracking down harder on journalists in a desperate attempt to assert its control over news and information. The authorities at first concentrated on imposing a news blackout by preventing journalists from covering demonstrations and criminalizing Facebook users. But in a new escalation, opposition journalists are now being abducted...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on Sri Lankan authorities to immediately release LankaeNews editor Benette Rupasinghe, who was Thursday arrested by the Colombo police for allegedly threatening another man. Aged 68 and a diabetes patient, Rupasinghe is currently being held in the infirmary of Colombo prison. The press freedom organisation condemned the way...

A warrant was issued for the arrest of Mahmudur Rahman, the editor of the opposition daily Amar Desh, on March 29, just two weeks after he was released from prison. He is accused of libelling senior Awami League officials in the southern town of Kotalipara. The Awami League has governed Bangladesh since 2008. Rahman is to be tried next month. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...

(MISA/IFEX): The government of Swaziland has and continues to threaten with prosecution people who are expressing themselves using popular social media networks such as Facebook. The government has accused the Facebookers of being too critical of the government and ruling elites in Swaziland. On March 25, Prime Minister Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini assured Senators in Parliament that his government...

Sports journalists Pedro Anibal Fernández, Ramón Morales Verduga and Héctor Barre were attacked on March 19 by fans of the Portoviejo University Sports League (LDUP) at the end of a football match at the Reales Tamarindo stadium in the town of Portoviejo, capital of the coastal province of Manabí, located 329 km southwest of Quito. The journalists said that at the end of the match between LDUP and...

The Argentine government should ensure that the nation's two largest dailies can be distributed without interference, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. CPJ's appeal comes two days after union demonstrators blocked trucking exits at the printing facilities of Clarín and La Nación, preventing Clarín from distributing its Sunday edition. Clarín and La Nación reported on their...

There has been no let up in the harassment of journalists that began on the eve of on March 25, which the Belarusian opposition celebrates as Freedom Day. President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s apparently panicked government is deploying all possibly means to silence its critics, with growing success. The country’s independent journalists have more need than ever of support from their colleagues abroad...

On March 19, a large crowd in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, prevented Arsène Evariste Kabore and Issa Kafando, editor-in-chief and cameraman, respectively, of the state-owned Burkinabe Broadcasting Corporation (RTB), from covering a meeting between Burkinabe labour unions and the government. The Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) correspondent reported that the RTB crew were singled...