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CPJ introduces 2009 International Press Freedom Awardees

Washington, November 19, 2009—Naziha Réjiba, editor of the Tunisian online news journal Kalima, said she knows what to expect when she returns home—surveillance, harassment, and threats conducted by one the world’s most repressive governments.

New York, October 9, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the prison sentences given to journalists at the weekly newspaper Nota on defamation charges on Thursday.

Amnesty International paid special recognition last week to Ebrima B. Manneh, a Gambian journalist who has disappeared, at its prestigious annual Media Awards ceremony in London. As Amnesty International UK's campaigner for individuals at risk in Africa, I was thrilled to be present at the awards ceremony and to watch BBC News TV presenter Mishal Husain introduce a film clip about Manneh's tragic case in front of hundreds of world-class journalists and human rights activists.

The Georgia-Russia crisis in August diverted international attention from another strategically important Caucasus country--oil-rich Azerbaijan. The authoritarian president, Ilham Aliyev, gained a new term in a flawed October 15 vote. Aliyev, who effectively inherited the presidency from his father, Heydar, in 2003, defeated six virtual unknowns after top opposition parties boycotted the October vote to protest restrictive new amendments to the election law.

October 2008

In Azerbaijan, an editor is jailed after investigating the unsolved murder of a colleague. The case has opened a window into widespread abuses in this tightly controlled nation on the Caspian Sea.

June 2008
News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

New York, March 7, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is appalled by the four-year prison term given today to Genimet Zakhidov, editor of the opposition daily Azadlyg (Freedom). Zakhidov was charged with hooliganism and inflicting minor bodily harm in November. He has been in custody ever since.

Zakhidov was secretly brought to the Yasamal District Court in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, at around 11 a.m., where Judge Sudaba Mamedova announced her verdict in an empty courtroom, Zakhidov’s lawyer Elchin Sadygov told CPJ. The journalist plans to appeal the decision.

Ignoring international opinion, the authoritarian government of President Ilham Aliyev clamped down on opposition and independent media and became the world’s fifth-leading jailer of journalists, with nine reporters and editors behind bars when CPJ conducted its annual census on December 1. On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, CPJ ranked the oil-rich Caspian Sea state as one of the world’s worst backsliders on press freedom.