Harassed

Urdu daily in Pakistan Asaap has alleged that Frontier Corps forces were posted outside its offices on August 1, 2009, questioning staff about connections with local insurgents, according to local news reports. The Frontier Corps is a local paramilitary unit stationed to quell a violent independence movement staged by Baloch nationalist groups in the province. In a front-page story on August 19...

The Italian editor whose newspaper is being sued for defamation by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday likened the situation to attacks on the American press during the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon. “Like the American journalists, our journalists were doing their work and were publishing information that had to be published,” said...

Russian online journalist Aleksandr Podrabinek, 56, known for his sharp commentary on political and social issues, has gone into hiding after receiving a series of threats stemming from a September 21 commentary on the news website Yezhednevny Zhurnal that pointed out the human rights abuses of the Soviet government. Angered by Podrabinek’s piece, members of the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi (Ours...

Four days after a joint international press freedom mission to Belarus, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) on Tuesday called on the Belarusian government to stop obstructing the work of journalists working for foreign news media. The press freedom organisation has signed a statement issued by the mission at the end of its five-day visit noting that: “Accreditation of journalists working for Belarus...

A newspaper editor in police custody in Niger since Sunday was charged with criminal libel on Wednesday in connection with a story accusing a top official of involvement in a corruption scandal, according to local journalists and news reports. Ibrahim Soumana Gaoh of the private weekly Le Témoin was being held at the central prison in the capital Niamey pending trial on Tuesday, according to the...

Turkish investigators have secretly listened into telephone calls to and from popular daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, the Turkish Justice Ministry has confirmed, according to Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News newspaper. The wiretapping took place without the necessary approval of the Turkish courts. Investigators undertook the controversial eavesdropping as part of an ongoing police probe — known as the...

Iranian judicial authorities are continuing to hold journalists employed by foreign news media including, Maziar Bahari, the correspondent of the US news magazine Newsweek, arrested exactly three months ago, and Fariba Pajooh, a stringer for Radio France Internationale and other media, who Tuesday began her second month in detention. Bahari has dual Canadian and Iranian citizenship. “The recent...

Georgian authorities have pressed criminal charges against the Tbilisi bureau chief for the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. According to RIA Novosti, Besik Pipia is facing up to three years in prison if convicted on a criminal charge of document forgery. Georgian police opened a criminal probe against Pipia on September 3, claiming he had forged his Georgian driver’s licence, which they issued to...

Official harassment of Malaysiakini, a widely read online news site in Malaysia that has faced persistent threats from government authorities over its 11-year history, has increased in recent times, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Officials from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) entered Malaysiakini’s offices on September 8 and videotaped its...

A Madrid prosecutor on Monday demanded a three year prison term - and a three year ban on practising journalism - for El Mundo Deputy-Editor Antonio Rubio, who is accused of allegedly "discovering and revealing state secrets." The charges stem from articles published in the Spanish daily on May 31, 2005 detailing confidential reports which an informer codenamed 'Cartagena' supplied to the Spanish...