New York, April 30, 2012--A French journalist who was injured during combat between Colombian Army troops and guerrillas has gone missing and may have been kidnapped by the rebels, according to Colombian and French officials.
On Thursday and Friday, we wrote about the ugly government backlash to last week's U.N. Human Rights Council resolution calling for an investigation into Sri Lanka's alleged abuses of international humanitarian law during its war with Tamil separatists.
New York, March 15, 2012--The Committee to Protect Journalists holds Syrian authorities responsible for the safety and well-being of Turkish journalists Adem Özköse and Hamit Coşkun, who are believed to be in government custody, and calls for their immediate release. The journalists were last heard from five days ago, according to news reports.
New York, March 14, 2012--China has approved revisions to its criminal code that grants police broad powers to hold journalists and others who discuss sensitive national issues without charge in secret detention for up to six months, according to news reports.
Good news for Gambia's beleaguered independent press has been rare during President Yahya Jammeh's 17-year rule, but last week brought three potentially positive developments. It's unclear whether they mark a real change in the status quo, but they may at least increase the resolve of advocacy groups to seek improvements.
For Sri Lankan journalists, January might be the cruelest month. In January 2011, Sonali Samarasinghe wrote about the death of her husband Lasantha Wickramatunga two years earlier on January 8, 2009. In January 2010 I reported in "Sri Lanka: A year later, still failing to fight media attacks" about the government's inactivity in investigating Wickramatunga's death one year on. That was a follow up to the February 2009 "Failure to Investigate," in which CPJ had investigated his death and two other January attacks --- one a bombing raid on an independent television station and the other -- an attack similar to that on Wickramatunga, though not fatal -- on Upali Tennakoon, the editor of a Sinhala newspaper.
New York, November 16, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by reports that two newspaper employees in Mexico have been missing since Monday and that in their last communication, the men said they were being followed by police cars.
On Thursday, U.S. Senator Richard Durbin sent a letter to Gambia's justice minister, Edward Gomez, renewing his appeal for the release of local journalist Ebrima "Chief" Manneh. Manneh disappeared more than five years ago after security agents seized him at the offices of his newspaper, the Daily Observer.
Ongoing strife in
New York, October 31, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the continued disappearance of Syrian journalists and bloggers.
