Legal Action

Ross Dunkley, founder and editor of the Myanmar Times newspaper, was convicted of assault and set free for time already spent in detention by a Burmese court on Thursday. The verdict, which carried a 30-day jail term, acquitted Dunkley of other charges viewed by many journalists as trumped up by authorities to put pressure on his news operation. The conviction represented an automatic breach of...

A Paris court has rejected the libel suit that Uzbek President Islam Karimov’s daughter, Lola Karimova, brought against the French news website Rue89 over an article describing her as a “dictator’s daughter” who used charity events to try to “whitewash her country’s image.” Karimova had demanded 30,000 euros in damages for the article by Augustin Scalbert, which was posted on the website in May...

Central African Republic authorities have charged the director of the independent weekly The Hills of Bangui, Faustin Bambou, with inciting hatred and disorder among the military forces and insulting the government, Bambou told New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The director was sent directly to Ngaragba Prison in the capital, Bangui. Four military policemen...

Sudan has pressed criminal charges against 10 journalists who have reported on the alleged rape and torture of a youth activist, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The activist said she was raped after participating in a demonstration in January. "Rather than address the systematic failures that enable torture and rape, the Sudanese government...

The youngest son of Indonesia’s former President Suharto - Hutomo Mandala Putra was awarded on May 24 damages worth 12.5 billion Rupiah ($1.46 million) for a magazine article which described him as a “convicted murderer.” Also known as “Tommy Suharto,” the description in the article was a reference to his 2002 conviction for ordering the murder of a Supreme Court judge. “It is very disturbing that...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) is concerned about all the libel actions being brought against Armenian newspapers and the disproportionate damages being demanded, which threaten their survival and create a climate that encourages self-censorship. This tendency to use lawsuits to throttle news media must be reined in. The repeal of jail sentences for libel and...

The Rwandan government has been hounding one of its media bugbears, Jean Bosco Gasasira, editor of the bimonthly newspaper Umuvugizi and one of the country’s most outspoken journalists, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. Prosecutors Thursday asked Rwanda’s supreme court to sentence him to ten years in prison on charges on which the Kigali high court acquitted...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the two criminal defamation charges that have been brought against Alberto Loyola, a journalist with radio DxRJ in Iligan City (on the southern island of Mindanao), by local city councillor Chonilo Ruiz. Arrested on April 18, Loyola was released Tuesday on bail of 10,000 pesos (160 euros) after being held for nearly 48...

A Dakar court Thursday gave Abdou Latif Coulibaly, the editor of the weekly La Gazette, a three-month suspended jail sentenced and fined him 10 million CFA francs (15,267 euros) for allegedly defaming a Senegalese businessman close to President Wade by accusing him of acting fraudulently in his dealings with the government. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) condemned...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has denounced as “illegal and absurd” the efforts of the Tajik government to get dissident journalist Dodojon Atovulloev forcefully returned to Tajikistan from his exile in Russia and Germany and called on these two governments to protect him. The state prosecutor in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, sent an extradition request to the...