Asia

2011

  
Pakistani journalists and CPJ award winners Najam Sethi and Jugnu Mohsin in 1999. (Saeed Khan/AFP)

More revelations of threats to Pakistani journalists

We released a statement Thursday–CPJ supports Pakistani journalists facing threats–about the decision of two Pakistani journalists to publicly announce the threats they had been receiving. Najam Sethi, editor of The Friday Times and host of a popular Urdu-language political program on Geo TV, and Jugnu Mohsin, also a Friday Times editor, said they had lived…

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Sites like this Facebook discussion group have been the subject of complaints to the Indian police by activists. (CPJ)

India struggles to cope with growing Internet penetration

As Internet penetration deepens, largely religiously and socially conservative India is struggling to cope with concerns about controversial web content and its easy accessibility to a vast population, all with little oversight. Local courts have become the launching point for some of the anti-Web offensives.

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Students are taken away from a Karachi seminary where they were found in chains. Producers from Samaa TV who broke the story have been threatened. (AFP/Asif Hassan)

‘Where is the state?’ asks Pakistani journalist under threat

Since making me aware of threats to Hamid Mir on December 20, Umar Cheema and I have been encouraging Pakistani journalists we know who are under threat to step forward with their own experiences. Ghulamaddin, producer for Samaa TV in Karachi who broke the story of students held in chains at a seminary, is coming…

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More on threats and journalist safety in Pakistan

Tuesday’s blog about threats to Hamid Mir generated a lot of discussion on our site. Mir messaged overnight, saying his case was widely reported in newspapers and discussed in Parliament, and there will be a committee of Parliament established to probe the issue. The Associated Press of Pakistan noted that “Minster for Interior Rehman Malik condemned the…

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Policing the Internet in India

Amid a raging debate on Internet freedom and censorship in India, members of the government met last week with a clutch of website operators, including representatives of Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. In a meeting scheduled to address a wider plan to leverage social media to empower the government, it’s unclear whether the touchy subject…

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In China, real people vs. Internet minders

In the next three months, users of China’s microblog weibo.com — “weibo” is the generic Chinese term for Twitter-like platforms — run by the huge sina.com (the English site is here) news portal, entertainment and blogging site, will have to start providing their real-world identities to the site, instead of simply being able to register.…

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Pakistan’s Hamid Mir publicizes a death threat

Geo TV’s most prominent television anchor, and one of the most prominent journalists in Pakistan, has just circulated a detailed email message of threats he has been receiving. Hamid Mir’s open, public response to the threats is a textbook case of how to handle the steady stream of intimidation that journalists face, not just in…

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Journalists killed: Inside the numbers

CPJ today released its annual tally of the journalists killed around the world. This is always a somber occasion for us as we chronicle the grim toll, remember friends who have been lost, and recommit ourselves to justice. It’s also a time when we are asked questions about our research and why our numbers are…

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Doctors treat Associated Press cameraman Umar Meraj after he was assaulted by police and paramilitary forces using rifle butts, batons, fists and kicks during a protest in Srinagar on November 25 (AP).

Q&A: Press Council of India’s Katju on media safety

Retired Supreme Court Justice Markandey Katju is shaking things up at the Press Council of India, where he was appointed chairman in October. The statutory body, mandated to look at media freedom and address complaints against the print media since 1966, has often been criticized for ineffectiveness, its role limited to admonishing news outlets.

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Uighur journalists who covered protests such as this one in 2009 were sentenced to harsh prison terms. (AP)

China’s jailed Uighurs: Out of sight, not out of mind

For the first time in more than a decade, China is not the world’s worst jailer of the press in CPJ’s annual census of imprisoned journalists. Among the 27 jailed in China, one group has seen a massive jump in imprisonments. In another first since CPJ began taking its census, more than half of those…

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2011