Your Excellency, On the occasion of Algeria’s upcoming presidential election next week, as the international media prepare to cover events inside the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), writes to express deep concern about ongoing government restrictions on foreign journalists who report from Algeria.
April 09, 1999 — Since political violence erupted in 1992, Algeria has been one of the most difficult countries in the world for foreign journalists to work. For several years, Algerian authorities have enforced a policy of providing mandatory escorts for foreign reporters, thus severely curtailing the ability to effectively investigative the country’s ongoing civil…
June 9, 1999 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a nonpartisan organization devoted to safeguarding press freedom around the world, has confirmed the following new developments in the cases of three independent journalists targeted by the Yugoslav military for practicing their profession. Croatian journalist escapes Yugoslav military incarceration
BANGKOK—When machete-wielding thugs set upon journalists in East Timor after the territory’s Aug. 30 vote for independence, it looked like another gruesome case of the press caught between warring sides. Deplorable, yes, but it comes with the territory if you choose to cover the front lines in conflict zones.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to the defense of press freedom worldwide, is writing to protest in the strongest terms against the continued detention of Raphael Lakpe and Jean Khalil Sylla, publisher and reporter, respectively, at the independent daily newspaper Le Populaire.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is appalled to learn that your government has ordered the Burundian army to treat journalists as legitimate military targets. On September 9, Your Excellency’s Defense Minister, Colonel Alfred Nkurunziza, said in a speech broadcast on state radio that the army should consider all journalists as enemies, and therefore legitimate targets, if they entered the Bujumbura Rurale province near the capital, where the army is fighting ethnic Hutu rebels.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the criminal prosecution of Nikol Pashinian, editor-in-chief of the opposition daily Oragir, as well as by efforts on the part of your government to shut down the paper.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly condemns the murder of Rohana Kumara, chief editor of the Sinhala-language newspaper Satana. At around 10 p.m. on September 7, unidentified assailants shot and killed Kumara on the road leading to his home in the Colombo suburb of Mirihana. The assailants reportedly fled the scene in a silver Toyota 300 car. Kumara had received a phone call earlier that night notifying him that a group of men had entered his home and threatened to harm his wife if she did not reveal her husband’s whereabouts.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to the defense of press freedom worldwide, is writing to protest in the strongest terms against the continued detention of Raphael Lakpe and Jean Khalil Sylla, publisher and reporter, respectively, at the independent daily newspaper Le Populaire.
Panama City, Panama, September 8, 1999–A delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) met with newly inaugurated president Mireya Moscoso this morning and urged her to repeal the country’s notorious “gag laws,” which criminalize the practice of journalism in Panama. The gag laws date largely from military governments of the 1970s and 1980s. They…