Twenty members of the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) have set up a Burma Action Group to support protesters and journalists in their struggle against the recent military crackdown in the country. Participants at the IFEX general meeting last week in Montevideo, led by Soe Myint of Burmese exile-run news agency Mizzima News, called for a factfinding mission to the notoriously

Slovenian journalists have decided to go to town over the President’s attempt to control newsrooms. A petition against censorship and political pressures on journalists in Slovenia has been signed by 438 journalists from major media outlets in Slovenia and sent to the governments of all European Union member states. The petition cites instances of censorship against individual journalists who

The Internet has not yet become an effective tool for human rights in the Arab world, says a recent study by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo). The 215-page study, 'Electronic Media and Human Rights', is the first in Arabic to discuss human rights in the discourse of electronic Arabic media outlets. It also surveyed use of the Internet by human rights organisations. Although

The nondescript town of Oaxaca, about 520 km southeast of capital Mexico City, has been gathering a lot of international media attention for all the wrong reasons. Three distributors of the newspaper El Imparcial del Istmo were attacked and shot dead on October 8 on a highway in Oaxaca, following weeks of threats made to the paper, the National Centre for Social Communication (Centro Nacional de

Two newsmen, Befekadu Moreda from Ethiopia and Paulos Kidane from Eritrea, both tried to flee the region to escape government oppression. But "one life (was) saved and the other lost." In a special report, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) recounts their stories and provides a glimpse into the adversity facing journalists in the volatile Horn of Africa. In his native Ethiopia, Moreda was

Turkey continues to use the judicial system to curb free expression. Journalists are still being charged under Article 301 of Turkey's Penal Code, which makes "insulting Turkishness" a crime punishable by prison terms. In the first six months of this year, 451 people were involved in 94 trials for using their right to freedom of expression out of which 17 were under Article 301. The controversial

The Valle del Cauca department in western Colombia has one of the highest rates of press freedom violations in the country, forcing journalists into silence, the Foundation for Press Freedom (Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa, FLIP) has found. According to the analysis, from 2003 to mid-2007, 50 violations were documented: 35 journalists were threatened, five of whom fled into exile; and three