impact

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has written a response to a recent CPJ protest letter. While we welcome his attention to the issues we raised about press freedom last month, we note with great concern the president’s comments about the ongoing criminal case of two journalists assaulted by police in 2008.

Reacting to the release of Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari on bail in Iran today, we issued the following statement: “We are greatly relieved that Maziar Bahari is out on bail and at home with his family in Tehran,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. “We hope the many journalists who remain jailed in Iran will also be released soon.” Bahari was arrested on June 21. His wife, Paola Gourley, is expecting their first child on October 26 and has experienced complications during her pregnancy.

When CPJ issued its recent special report Anatomy of Injustice: The Unsolved Killings of Journalists in Russia, we called on world leaders to join us in engaging Russian leaders on human rights, press freedom, and impunity. We were pleased to hear Secretary Hillary Clinton do just that today when she spoke about impunity at a town-hall style meeting today in Moscow. 

Yesterday, CPJ received the Thomas J. Dodd Prize for International Justice and Human Rights at an outdoor ceremony at the University of Connecticut. It was one of those perfect, crisp fall mornings in New England with a strong wind blowing clouds across the sun and shaking the first leaves from the maples, which have already turned red and orange. CPJ co-founder Michael Massing and I accepted the award, selected by the national advisory board of the Dodd Center. Journalist Mariane Pearl spoke at the ceremony and described how her husband, Daniel Pearl, once told her he "loved life" but was prepared to risk it for his work. She spoke inspirationally about journalists around the world who are willing who make sacrifices to tell stories that must be told. 

Amid ongoing attacks on journalists, CPJ advocacy in Europe and Central Asia has generated some positive results. Earlier this month, a CPJ delegation met with Russian and European officials, who promised to revisit 17 journalist murders in Russia since 2000. The declared commitment to reverse Russia’s grim record of impunity came after we presented our own in-depth investigation into the unsolved killings of Russian journalists in our report Anatomy of Injustice.

New York, September 23, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists applauds a Philippine Supreme Court decision to grant a change of venue in the trial of a defendant in the attempted murder of radio journalist Nilo Labares, who was shot and injured in Cagayan de Oro City in March. The transfer is the third venue change recently approved by the Supreme Court in a media attack.

We received great news that Parwez Kambakhsh, a 24-year-old Afghan journalist and student who was unjustly convicted of blasphemy and serving a 20-year term, was released from prison. But happiness over his release—the product of intensive advocacy by CPJ and others—is tempered by deteriorating press conditions overall in Afghanistan. 

On an ordinary Friday, Sarata Jabbi-Dibba, a reporter in the West African nation of Gambia, publishes her weekly column on women’s issues, “She She She,” in the only independent daily newspaper here, The Point. Last Friday however, Dibba was herself a newsmaker—after recovering her freedom.

New York, September 4, 2009--The Committee to Protect Journalists is relieved about the release of six prominent Gambian journalists on Thursday after President Yahya Jammeh pardoned them. 

A Supreme Court decision to allow a change of venue in the trial of three suspects accused of murdering journalist Dennis Cuesta, at left, in August 2008 sets a hopeful precedent in the fight against impunity in media killings in the Philippines. The decision was granted in mid-July and press freedom groups tracking the case learned about the ruling on August 28.