Harassed

Tension prevailed for some time in front of a police station in the temple town of Tirupati following detention of a local journalist here for a few hours today. The journalist, Gandhi, printer and publisher of Telugu weekly 'Tirupati Vani,' was picked up from his residence in the early hours today and detained at the East Police Station for a few hours after a complaint lodged by a neurologist...

A Beijing-based correspondent for the respected German weekly newspaper Die Zeit was detained for five hours Friday near so-called cancer villages along a severely polluted river in central China. Georg Blume said in a telephone interview from the hotel room where he was being held in Shenqiu, Henan province, and was accused of conducting 'illegal interviews'. He was cross-examined until he was...

The International Press Institute (IPI) has condemned the ongoing treatment of the magazine Cicero and its reporter Bruno Schirra by German authorities, and urged the German interior minister to suspend the prosecutions against the magazine and its reporter. In a letter to the German interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, the IPI urged the ministry and the prosecutor's office to issue new...

CHANDIGARH: A report by The Indian Express this morning on a complaint against Inspector General of Police Sumedh Singh Saini to the state human rights commission brought the might of the Punjab cops to the reporter’s door. Throwing all legal norms out of the window, a police team, reporting directly to IGP Saini, stormed into the residence of The Indian Express Principal Correspondent Gautam...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is outraged over the continued detention of journalist Venu Gopal in Qila Jail, Nizamabad, Andhra Pradesh, India. "Incarceration of journalists on false charges is an outright attack on press freedom, and must not be tolerated on any account," said IFJ President Christopher Warren. According to information received by the IFJ, noted journalist, and...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the prolonged detention of N. Venugopal, the editor of the Telugu-language fortnightly Veekshanam in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, and the conspiracy charge that has been brought against him. Venugopal was arrested on 30 May in the company of other writers and activists related to the local Naxalite Maoists. The press freedom organisation...

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) protested today against the arrest of a reporter working for the Tamil-language biweekly Nakkheeran, in what is a renewed attempt by the authorities in the south-eastern state of Tamil Nadu to implicate the staff of this independent newspaper in a murder allegedly committed by the well-known local bandit Veerappan. The reporter, who is known...

On 14 April 2003, RSF denounced the arrest of R. R. Gopal, editor of the bi-weekly Tamil-language magazine "Nakkheeran", for "illegal possession of firearms" and "sedition". The organisation said the editor's arrest is an attempt by police to cover up their inability to find Veerappan, one of India's most notorious bandits. RSF said Gopal and other journalists in the southeastern state of Tamil...

Police in Tamil Nadu state (south-eastern India) have been attempting, by every possible means, to arrest R. R. Gopal, editor of the Tamil-language twice-weekly magazine "Nakkheeran", because of his alleged ties with the wanted bandit Veerappan. RSF has asked Tamil Nadu state police and government officials to stop harassing "Nakkheeran"'s editorial staff. The organisation believes that the...

On 31 January 2003, RSF called on Tamil Nadu state government leader Selvi J. Jayalalithaa to either provide evidence of journalist Krishna Kumar's reported involvement in a five-year-old murder or release him at once. Kumar, of the fortnightly Tamil newspaper "Nakeeran", was picked up on 29 January, in the morning, officially in connection with the killing of a young woman five years ago. However...