We're pleased to launch CPJ's official Facebook page in Spanish, CPJ en Español. We hope to engage our followers throughout Latin America in an ongoing conversation about press freedom challenges in the region.
Committee to Protect Journalists
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The discussions between Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, and governments such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and India continue to hit the headlines. In each case, disagreements center on providing customer communications to security and law enforcement services. The rumblings from these nations over monitoring powers aren't just limited to RIM: India has announced its intention to put the same pressure on Google (for Gmail), and Skype (for its IM and telephony services).
Cape Town's St George's Cathedral, a rallying point for civil rights action during apartheid, was the site of the public launch on Tuesday of a mass campaign aimed at stopping a secrecy bill seen as a major threat to South Africans' hard-won freedom.
A grave accusation by the administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner against Argentina's two leading newspapers, Clarín and La Nación, has prompted claims that the government is attempting to control the press, and stirred up a heated debate on the state of freedom of expression in the country. The administration is alleging that the papers colluded with a military regime more than three decades ago to force the sale of a newsprint supplier.
On Tuesday, Kirchner presented the findings of a government report titled "Papel Prensa: The Truth," a 400-page investigation on the history and economic activities of the newsprint manufacturer, according to local and international news reports.
With surprise and relief, Ugandan journalists, who routinely face the police's "media crimes" unit, welcomed a partial victory for press freedom on Wednesday. The country's constitutional court had ruled that criminal sedition was unconstitutional. Even so, there was a consensus that more legal press battles lie ahead.
The National Press Club has announced
the recipients of the 2010 John Aubuchon
Freedom of the Press Award, which is given each year to individuals who have contributed
to the cause of press freedom and open government. This year, the international
recipient is Iranian blogger Kouhyar Goudarzi, who is being held in Tehran's Evin
Prison--notorious for its torture of detainees. CPJ wrote
earlier this month about a hunger strike in Evin in which several political prisoners,
including at least five journalists, protested their inhumane treatment.
Goudarzi was one of the protesters. Arrested
in December 2009, Goudzari, a former editor of Committee
of Human Rights Reporters, has been charged with heresy,
propagating against the regime, and participating in illegal gatherings.
With another journalist murdered in Honduras on Tuesday, bringing the total killed since March to eight, the country's press is understandably jittery. In a new documentary jointly produced by the Inter-American Press Association and the Video Journalism Movement, Carlos Mauricio Flores, the executive director of Tegucigalpa-based El Heraldo newspaper says, "We journalists are living in uncertainty and fear."
In an encouraging ruling last week, the Basmanny District Court in Moscow ordered that two suspects in the January 2009 double murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anastasiya Baburova and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov be kept in custody pending trial.
You may have noticed a few changes we've made to the CPJ Blog recently. Here's what's new (with much thanks to our Web developer, John Emerson):
Our bylines are now clickable. You can see a staffer's (or guest blogger's) entries on one page by clicking, giving you an overview of blogs written by, say, Bob Dietz, our Asia program coordinator.
We've also added small photos and brief bios at the tops of pages and at the bottom of individual entries.
We've also created tag clouds on the blog. Look at the right-hand column: Topics are prominently displayed, as are categories, below that.
Another new feature is the drop-down list of authors, also in the right-hand column: "Entries by Author."
By showing you a little more about who we are and where we come from, we hope this brings our work within closer reach. Our goal is to get you reading, and caring, about journalists and the press in danger around the world.
About 18 hours after eight hostages and the gunmen holding
them in a tourist bus were killed in a shootout with
police in the heart of Manila, officials broke away from the demands of the
moment to meet with a CPJ delegation in the president's offices at Malacañang
Palace. Justice
Secretary Leila de Lima was also scheduled to attend, but she was laid up
in the hospital, suffering from pneumonia and exhaustion. With the ugly
resolution of the hostage situation--it happened less than a mile from Malacañang--President
Benigno Aquino understandably had pressing matters to attend to.
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