Imprisoned

Qi Chonghuai, a journalist in China’s Shandong province who had written critically about local officials, was sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison for fraud and extortion in a trial that lasted 12 hours, according to his wife and lawyers. Access to the trial was limited, and reporters were not allowed to attend. It began at 9 am and continued until 9:30 pm, when the sentence was announced...

A reporter and a correspondent of China Mining News, a newspaper supervised by the Ministry of Land and Resources, were sentenced to seven and six years in jail for taking bribes when covering news in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua has eported. The man, surnamed Liu, 32, a reporter in the Shanxi provincial bureau of China Mining News, was...

A freelance journalist in Vietnam has been handed a five-year prison sentence on charges of “taking advantage of democratic rights to act against the state’s interests” and “receiving money from abroad to support complaints against the state” under article 258 of the criminal code. He has 15 days to appeal. A court in Vinh Thuan in the southern province of Kien Giang imposed the sentence Friday on...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called for the immediate release of Argentina's Córdoba province-based journalist Néstor Pasquini, who has been held without trial for eight months on charges of inciting violence, aggravated arson, and causing minor injuries during a riot he was covering in a small town. The owner of local radio station FM Show and correspondent of the Red Panorama radio...

The editor of a small-circulation fortnightly is being detained for no known reason since March 7 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Nsimba Embete Ponte, editor of L’Interprète, is being held incommunicado in a building used by the National Intelligence Agency (ANR) in Kinshasa. “The security forces have no grounds for acting in this way,” Paris...

Six people affiliated with the Sri Lankan news website OutreachSL have been detained by the Terrorist Investigation Division of the Sri Lankan police force in Colombo since last week, according to Agence France-Presse and local news reports. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CJ) has urged the government of Sri Lanka to charge these journalists and media workers or release them...

The editor of an opposition daily in Azerbaijan has been sentenced to a four-year prison term on charges of hooliganism and inflicting minor bodily harm in November. He has been in custody ever since. Acording to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Genimet Zakhidov, editor the daily Azadlyg (Freedom), was secretly brought to the Yasamal District Court in Azerbaijan’s capital...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reiterated its call for the release of Aboubacar Gourouza, the editor of independent bimonthly L’Eveil Plus, after a Niamey court today sentenced him to a month in prison for allegedly “discrediting” a court decision in an article in his newspaper by comparing the decision with one taken in a similar case. “Our concern is mounting as the space for free...

It seems to be becoming a habit of the US — an Afghan journalist working for Canada's CTV television network in Afghanistan has been designated an unlawful enemy combatant. The journalist, Jawed Ahmad, has been held without charge for the past four months at the US military compound in Bagram, 50 km north of Kabul. Major Chris Belcher, a spokesman for the US-led coalition, said that an "enemy

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) is very worried about imprisoned journalist Slim Boukhdir’s state of health after he staged an eight-day hunger strike in protest against the conditions in which he is being held. Arrested on November 26, the Al-Arabiya website’s correspondent is serving a one-year sentence in Sfax prison (230 km south of Tunis). “Preventing a prisoner from seeing his family or...