SouthOssetia

New York, September 9, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes today’s release of Telewizja Polska (TVP) crew members who were detained outside the Georgian village of Karaleti by South Ossetian militia members, and taken into custody in the regional capital, Tskhinvali on Monday.

Reporter Dariusz Bohatkiewicz told CPJ that authorities in Tskhinvali transferred him and his colleagues—cameraman Marcin Wesołowski and driver Levan Guliashvili—to Russian peacekeepers who turned them over to Georgian authorities and Polish diplomats. TVP crew’s equipment and car were returned undamaged.

New York, September 8, 2008—South Ossetian and Russian authorities should immediately release three members of a Polish television crew detained today near the village of Karaleti in the buffer zone between South Ossetia and Georgia, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. Authorities confiscated equipment and cell phones from the Telewizja Polska (TVP) crew and were holding the three members incommunicado in the regional capital, Tskhinvali, according to CPJ sources.

GEORGIA:

New York, August 19, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists today urged the Georgian government to stop blocking Russian broadcasts and Web sites.

According to the Moscow-based radio Ekho Moskvy, Russian Television International (RTVi) broadcasting was cut after it aired Ekho Moskvy’s interview with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the conflict in South Ossetia and the future of the relationship between Russia and Georgia. In the interview, Lavrov supported the Russian incursion into Georgia, and called for Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to step down.

Journalists came under fire in their car on August 10 near Tskhinvali. According to the Turkish Daily News, Turkish journalist Recep Öztürk was wounded. It is not clear who was shooting at them--the lines have been fluid as the Georgians and Russians battle in South Ossetia. At least three journalists have been killed and 10 injured since fighting began last week.

New York, August 12, 2008--Stan Storimans, a cameraman with Netherlands-based television channel RTL Nieuws, was killed today during bombing in the central Georgian city of Gori. His colleague, reporter Jeroen Akkermans, suffered shrapnel wounds to his leg and was hospitalized in a Tbilisi clinic, Jaspir Teijsse, a spokesman for RTL Nieuws, told CPJ Storimans was 39.

The conflict in Georgia is making headlines this morning with The Georgian Times Web site running a news brief on press casualties that quotes our alert from yesterday. RFE/RL also has a story online that quotes our coverage of the death of three journalists and the disappearance of two others in South Ossetia. The Web site Bloggernews has a post about the suspension of VOA's Russian service shortly before the conflict began. Also, the Institute for War and Peach Reporting has an article outlining the conflict and guarantees from Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to protect freedom of the press even as the violence continues.

Philippine Web site The News Today has an article about journalists taking to the streets in Roxas City to protest the death of their colleague Martin Roxas. Yesterday, the Southeast Asian Press Alliance's Web site re-posted an article from the Manila-based Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility that lamented the death of broadcaster Dennis Cuesta, who succumbed to his wounds suffered on August 4.

CPJ board member Sheila Coronel blogs today from Manila on the deaths of these two journalists and the deepening crisis of impunity in the Philippines.

New York, August 11, 2008--Two journalists were reported killed, at least eight were injured, and two have gone missing since fighting erupted between Georgian, Russian, and local forces in the disputed region of South Ossetia. No press-related casualties have been immediately reported in the conflict in another breakaway Georgian region, Abkhazia.

Facing a week of massive protests in the capital, Tbilisi, President Mikhail
Saakashvili stunned Western allies in November by imposing a state of emergency, banning broadcast news reporting, closing two television stations, and deploying police to forcefully disperse demonstrators. Saakashvili defended the November 7 crackdown, saying that the protests were orchestrated by Moscow with the intention of overthrowing his government. After acceding to opposition demands for early presidential elections, Saakashvili lifted the state of emergency and the news-gathering ban nine days later. But by then, he had damaged his own reputation as a pro-Western reformer.

Television news, which had rallied support for Georgia’s pro-democracy
revolution three years earlier, suffered serious blows from government harassment, business takeovers, and, as many saw it, self-inflicted scandal. President Mikhail Saakashvili’s administration took an aggressive approach in managing television coverage by pressuring and harassing critical TV reporters. Georgia’s largest television company, with holdings that included the influential Rustavi-2 station, changed hands in November amid considerable intrigue. And the hard-hitting independent station 202 went off the air in the fall after getting caught up in an extortion scandal.