Impact

New York, May 8, 2013--A man who said he was paid the equivalent of US$250 to kill Philippine radio journalist Gerardo Ortega, left, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the 2011 murder, according to news reports and the victim's family. The Committee to Protect Journalists today joined with Ortega family in calling for the arrests of the suspected masterminds.

Who can say exactly when the work of press freedom groups, human rights defenders, and budding networks of Mexican journalists became a movement? It would have been many murders, many funerals, many orphans ago. It would have been countless news events--about crime, corruption, violence--that went uncovered because reporters and news organizations concluded that the only way to survive was to stay silent. But finally, several years ago, the work of all these groups began to push the massacre of the Mexican press on to the national agenda. On Thursday, the movement led to a bill that gives the federal government jurisdiction over crimes against journalists. Today, the measure awaits only the president's approval. 

Bangkok, April 26, 2013--The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the decision by Thailand's Ministry of Culture to reverse its earlier imposed ban on the locally produced documentary Fah Tam Pan Din Soon (Boundary).

"The ministry's reversal of its censorship order against director Nontawat Numbchapol's documentary is a step in the right direction," said Shawn Crispin, CPJ's senior Southeast Asia representative. "We would encourage government authorities to reconsider their banning of various other politically-oriented films, books and websites currently censored."

In a welcome move Wednesday, Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak al-Sabah offered to shelve Kuwait's controversial draft media law, according to news reports. The announcement came in what the official Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) called a "candid, frank, and expanded meeting with chief editors of Kuwaiti press." 

New York, April 25, 2013-The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the approval today of legislation that will implement a constitutional amendment that gives federal authorities in Mexico broader jurisdiction to prosecute crimes against freedom of expression. 

"This is a legislative milestone and a step forward in the fight against the impunity that persists in crimes against the press," said CPJ senior Americas program coordinator, Carlos Lauría. "We urge President Enrique Peña Nieto to immediately sign these measures into law and then ensure that authorities effectively use this new tool to bring the killers of journalists to justice."   

There is good news from Strasbourg that follows up on my entry from earlier this week, "European Parliament has chance to take on Vietnam." Today, the European Parliament did exactly that when they unanimously adopted an Urgent Resolution on Vietnam. It was a wide-ranging document, but a large part was devoted the freedom of expression issues that are central to CPJ's concerns. In Article 7, the European Parliament:

A short note to follow up on an alert we posted Wednesday on the threatened deportation of Lohini Rathimohan  (also spelled Lokini), a former television journalist and one of 19 Tamil refugees facing deportation from the United Arab Emirates. Earlier reports said the refugees, who reached Dubai illegally, could be deported this week.

On Wednesday, more than a year after being blocked in Kyrgyzstan by government order, Ferghana News was again accessible to the public without the aid of proxy servers. Most local Internet providers, including the state-owned Kyrgyz Telecom, restored access to the website, Daniil Kislov, Ferghana's editor, told CPJ.

New York, April 10, 2013--The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release of Cuban journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, a reporter with the independent news agency Centro de Información Hablemos Press, who had been imprisoned since September while reporting on an international medical donation to Cuba.