Middle East & North Africa

New York, April 20, 2010—Anti-riot police assaulted journalists covering two different protests in Sulaimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan on Saturday and Tuesday. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the attacks and calls on authorities to stop harassing journalists reporting in the field.

CPJ’s 2010 Impunity Index spotlights countries
where journalists are slain and killers go free

New York, April 20, 2010—Deadly, unpunished violence against the press has soared in the Philippines and Somalia, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in its newly updated Impunity Index, a list of countries where journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes. Impunity in journalist murders also rose significantly in Russia and Mexico, two countries with long records of entrenched, anti-press violence.

New York, April 19, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned threats made by the Iranian government against Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari. Bahari, left, who was imprisoned in Iran for 118 days on fabricated antistate charges following last year’s disputed June presidential election, told CPJ that family members in Iran had received a threatening phone call on Saturday from a man who identified himself as an Iranian court official. 

New York, April 15, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Yemeni authorities to drop new charges brought against Muhammad al-Maqaleh, editor of the opposition Yemeni Socialist Party's news Web site Aleshteraki, in connection with a 2005 article. 

New York, April 14, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the Sudanese authorities to immediately drop criminal charges against prominent journalist and opposition party member Al-Haj Ali Warrag. 

New York, April 13, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by recent reports that a Yemeni editor, detained without charge since May 2009 for covering unrest in the southern part of the country, was assaulted by inmates.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement after learning that a months-long gag order was lifted today. The gag order prevented Israeli media from reporting on the case of a soldier charged with “harming national security” who is under house arrest for leaking documents that allegedly show that the military violated an Israeli Supreme Court decision to cease a policy of assassinations in the occupied Palestinian territories.

New York, April 7, 2010—Uniform and plainclothes Egyptian security forces assaulted and obstructed journalists trying to cover protests in Cairo on Tuesday, according to news accounts and interviews. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the actions and calls for authorities to stop harassing journalists reporting from the scene of news events.