Threatened

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has voiced its deep concern about an upsurge in fatwas (religious decrees) calling for the murder of journalists in the Arab and Muslim world. In the latest case, a high-ranking Saudi official, Sheikh Saleh al-Luhidan, president of the superior council of jurisprudence, issued a fatwa on September 12 calling for the murder of owners of Arabic satellite television...

Ethiopian police in the capital, Addis Ababa, threatened on August 4 to block distribution of an independently owned newspaper if it continues its leading coverage of a new political opposition movement, according to local journalists. The Amharic-language weekly Awramba Times reported Tuesday that it had received two separate phone warnings from top police officials to stop any coverage of "anti...

The Editors Guild of India has expressed shock at the pressure tactics being adopted by the Bharatiya Janata Party against CNN IBN Television channel. Criticising BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu for declaring that his party would boycott CNN IBN, if the channel does not immediately telecast the tapes of the sting operation carried out in concert with the BJP MPs in New Delhi on Juy 22 in connection with...

A journalist of a Hindi daily in Sonepat has alleged that he was threatened by a BSP leader to stop filing stories against him and his party, the Indian Express has reported. Former MLA Dev Raj Dewan, however, denied that he had threatened Jatinder Saharan in his office on Sunday evening. "Allegations levelled against me are baseless and even mischievous and politically motivated to malign me in...

Aaj Kal, an Urdu-language daily published from Lahore, has been threatened by Islamic activists angered by the publication of a cartoon about Umme Hassaan, wife of Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz and also an editorial criticizing the religious militancy. The Lal Masjid, located in Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad, was the centre of a stand-off between the mosque...

Local Taliban have threatened four journalists in the South Waziristan Agency of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), warning them to give up their profession or face the consequences, Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) has reported. According to press reports, the threat was issued in pamphlets circulated by local Taliban in the town of Wana in South Waziristan. The pamphlet...

Rafael Velasco Salas, deputy director of the bimonthly publication Zona Norte and correspondent in Chiapas for the Oaxaca-based newspaper Noticias, Voz e Imagen, was assaulted and threatened with murder by Humberto Cernuda Hernández, brother of Josefa Cernuda - the president of the Family Services Unit (Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, DIF) of the city of Pichucalco in the state of Chiapas...

The publisher and editor of an Urdu-language newspaper in Houston, Pakistan Times USA, has received telephone death threats, and thousands of copies of the free weekly were removed in bulk from dozens of locations in southeastern Texas, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The threats and theft of the papers came after the Pakistan Times USA published an advertisement by the...

Fátima Monterrosa, an investigative journalist for the Mexican magazine Emeequis, has been subjected to threats after publishing an article entitled "A Viceroyalty Named Tlaxcala". The article exposed a series of anomalies in the administration of the state government of Tlaxcala. The work of Monterrosa is well known in the journalistic community in Mexico. She has worked as a press correspondent...

A Colombian journalist has been threatened and asked not to distribute his magazine in a remote town, according to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). On June 14, at 2:20 p.m. (local time) in the national capital, Bogotá, journalist Pedro Antonio Cárdenas was stopped by two men travelling on a motorcycle. After pointing a revolver at him, they threw him to the ground and beat him up...