May 2009 Archives

With a June 4 criminal trial date looming for what North Korea calls "hostile acts," the families of Euna Lee and Laura Ling have decided to speak out about the two journalists' detention in Pyongyang. The two women have been held since March 17. In a Facebook announcement, the families told supporters: "Our families have been very quiet because of the extreme sensitivity of the situation, but given the fact that our girls are in the midst of a global nuclear stand-off, we cannot wait any longer."

Cuban dissidents--both on and off the island--have been blasting the news of Víctor Rolando Arroyo's 12-day hunger strike. In a matter of hours, CPJ received three concerned e-mails from Havana and Miami. In the meantime, foreign-based Cuban news Web sites plastered the story across the Internet. 

New York, May 26, 2009-- Following a Western news agency report in which a Canadian and Australian journalist held hostage in war-torn Mogadishu for nine months complained of poor health and urged their respective governments to help free them, CPJ issued the following statement today:

New York, May 26, 2009--The Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement in response to the killing of Mexican crime reporter Eliseo Barrón of the Torreón-based daily La Opinión that belongs to the Milenio media group. Barrón was abducted by unidentified hooded gunmen Monday and found dead this morning in the town of Gómez Palacio, according to local press reports:

On May 18, Syrian journalist and pro-democracy activist Michel Kilo was released from prison after serving a three-year sentence for "weakening national sentiment and encouraging sectarian strife." Kilo, who was a regular contributor to the leading Lebanese daily, Al-Nahar, and the London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi among other publications, was detained in May 2006 after writing articles calling for the normalization of Lebanese-Syrian relations and an end to a spate of political assassinations in Lebanon. CPJ spoke to Kilo, left, after his release from prison. 

New York, May 22, 2009--Following news that Abdirisak Warsame Mohamed of Radio Shabelle was shot to death today in the crossfire of government and militia forces in the capital, Mogadishu, CPJ issued this statement:

Franchou Namegabe Nabintu, an award-winning journalist from the Democratic Republic of Congo, operates in one of the most dangerous regions for journalists in Africa. She is a founding member of the South Kivu's Association of Women Journalists (AFEM), which has trained female journalists and presents radio programs spotlighting women's issues, especially in rural areas. CPJ interviewed Nabintu, at left, on Tuesday, on the heels of her stirring testimony before the U.S. Senate last week to discuss the challenges of reporting in the volatile eastern province of South Kivu, where violence against women is commonplace. 

Following the recent arrest and continued detention of three Tamil doctors--Thangamuttu Sathiyamorthi, Thurairaja Varatharajan and V. Sunmugarajah --by the Sri Lankan military after they supplied local and international news media with causality figures in Vanni during the last stages of the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, we issued this statement...

It's been almost a month since I arrived in the United States. Oddly, I haven't felt homesick or strange here even though this is my first time ever outside Iraq. I was born in Baghdad in 1986. I never lived anywhere else. Baghdad is where my father and mother were born, fell in love, and married. It's the city where I grew up and got my university degree. It's the city that holds all of the memories of my 23 years. I'm trying to understand why I don't miss it, and I keep coming back to this: Maybe it's because I never felt comfortable there, whether in my childhood under the dictatorship of Saddam or my adulthood under the American war against terrorism. 

In Madagascar, dozens of journalists took to the streets of the capital, Antananarivo, to protest the imprisonment of radio presenter Evariste Ramanatsoavina, held since May 4. Ramanatsoavina, a presenter with Radio Mada, a now-banned station owned by ousted president Marc Ravalomanana, faces charges in connection with the station's political commentary. The case illustrates the volatile struggle for political control of this Indian Ocean island nation--a battle being waged in large part through partisan media outlets.

We welcome good news from Zimbabwe today as authorities released Alec Muchadehama, one of many lawyers working in defense of persecuted journalists in that country.

News of the coming posthumous publication of Zhаο Ziyаng's memoirs hit the stands this week--outside China, anyway. Local media did not cover the story on Friday, and officials have yet to comment. Neither the Chinese nor the English version of the book, Prisoner of the State, reportedly transcribed while the former Communist Party general secretary was under house arrest, will be available in China after its release on May 19, international news reports say.

A mysterious fire in Republic of Congo this week destroyed property belonging to President Denis Sassou Nguesso. The origin of the fire was not officially determined, recalling a similar murky blaze in January, which led to the death of journalist Bruno Ossébi.

In response to a North Korean statement that American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling of U.S. media outlet Current TV, arrested on March 17 along the border with China, will be put on trial on June 4, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued this statement...

Roxana Saberi was released on Monday after more than four months imprisonment at Tehran's Evin Prison. She had been convicted of spying for the U.S. in a closed-door, one-hour trial on April 18 in a notoriously harsh Iranian Revolutionary Court and given an eight-year jail sentence. On Sunday, a court of appeal in Tehran gave Saberi and her two lawyers a chance to present their appeal. CPJ spoke to Saleh Nikbakht, one of the lawyers, about the trial. 

One of our news alerts on Monday detailed the harassment reporters faced as they tried to cover the anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake, one of China's greatest natural disasters. Today, on the anniversary, newspapers marked the event with strong coverage. That's a world of difference from the years of coverage that obscured the breadth of destruction and the extent of fatalities in the Tangshan earthquake of 1976. 

New York, May 11, 2009--The Committee to Protect Journalists has issued the following statement in response to reports that freelance journalist Roxana Saberi, who had been imprisoned in Iran, has been released this morning:

On Thursday, I participated in a panel discussion about media in the Middle East at the United Nations to commemorate World Press Freedom Day. Other panellists included Alya Al-Thani, counsellor, Permanent Mission of Qatar to the United Nations; Abderrahim Foukara, chief of the Washington Bureau of Al-Jazeera; Ebtihal Mubarak, journalist for Saudi Arabia's English-language daily Arab News; and Ghassan Shabaneh, assistant professor of Middle East and International Studies at Marymount Manhattan College. I talked about the great obstacles to press freedom in the region...

Santa María El Oro Mayor Martín Silvestre Herrera denied any connection to Sunday's murder of local journalist Carlos Ortega Samper in the northern Durango state, according to Mexican press reports. 

I'm finally in America. I lived all of my 23 years in Baghdad, never even traveling outside Iraq, but now I am in Tucson, Arizona, to begin a new life. I'm still trying to understand my feelings--missing the streets of Baghdad and the comfort of my family, but enjoying the sense that I can go about my day without being stopped and questioned for no particular reason.

A French judge on Tuesday authorized an anti-corruption group to pursue a complaint that questions how the leaders of three oil-rich, central African nations amassed their personal assets. One byline was absent in news media coverage: Bruno Ossébi, an online Congolese columnist and one of the few local journalists who had covered the sensitive issue. Ossébi died in February in a mysterious fire that destroyed his home and killed three others.

"Information is power, which is precisely why many governments attempt to control the press to suppress opposition and preempt dissent," said U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who three years ago founded the Congressional Caucus for Freedom of the Press. "Far too often, the reporters and editors who demand reform, accountability, and transparency find themselves at risk," he went on. "The censorship, intimidation, imprisonment, and murder of these journalists are not only crimes against these individuals, but they also impact those who are denied access to their ideas and information."

Sri Lanka got special mention in the statements of world leaders marking World Press Freedom Day, May 3. It's not surprising. The government in Colombo has coupled an all-out effort to end its war with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam with an assault on critics in the Sri Lankan media. U.S. President Barack Obama's statement mentioned the egregious case of J.S. Tissainayagam, on trial in Colombo and accused of terrorism because of his writing. 

A major leap forward for freedom of expression in Vietnam has been the rise of blogs. But this development has led to growing conflicts between bloggers, government authorities, and, potentially, multinational Internet service companies.  

In response to yesterday's repeal of Brazil's infamous 1967 Press Law by the Supreme Federal Tribunal, we issued the following statement...

Barack Obama first addressed press freedom as a global issue back when he was visiting his father's native Kenya as a senator in 2006. "Press freedom is like tending a garden, it's never done," Obama told reporters in Nairobi after a recent Kenyan government crackdown on the press. "It continually has to be nurtured and cultivated and the citizenry has to value it. It's one of those things that can slip away if we don't tend to it."

The resolution sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) drew the support of 10 other senators across both sides of the aisle, from elder statesmen like Sens. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to the freshman Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-DE). Representing constituents from the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic to the Okefenokee swamplands, they and other senators came together to not only celebrate and evaluate press freedom around the globe, but to also, in the words of the resolution that they co-sponsored in honor of World Press Freedom Day on Sunday, "defend the media from attacks on the independence of the media, and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty."

CPJ's ranking is helpful in that it makes the world pay attention to countries that censor the Internet. I do not know much about other countries, but I know about China. I believe that the outside world (as well as people within China) cannot actually know how many people are jailed because of Internet speech. The successful cover-up of this information makes China's rank lower than it should be, but coming in at number eight regardless indicates how bad the situation is.

Blogging in Burma is nearly as dangerous as protesting on the streets against the country's military-run government. So it will come as no surprise to those who closely monitor Burma's heavily restricted media and censored Internet that CPJ has ranked the country as the worst place in the world to be a blogger. 

On Thursday, the U.S.-based National Association of Black Journalists announced the winner of its 2009 Percy Qoboza Foreign Journalists Award: Zimbabwean journalist Anderson Shadreck Manyere. Half a world away, however, Manyere, left, lingered in a hospital in the capital, Harare, traumatized by nearly four months of imprisonment, according to his lawyer.