Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns in the strongest terms today’s indictment of Andrew Finkel, a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul who reports for Time magazine and the Times of London and appears on CNN. In a hearing today, Finkel, a British national, was charged with “insulting state institutions” under Article 159 of the Turkish Penal Code. The charge comes in response to a February 1998 article Finkel wrote for the daily Sabah titled “Shurnak 1998,” which discussed Turkey’s ongoing military operations against the Kurds in the southeast. An expert panel’s report, submitted to the court, concluded that Finkel did not insult the military. Another hearing has been scheduled for November 16, pending the report of a second panel of experts on the validity of the charges. If convicted, Finkel faces up to six years in prison.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is outraged by this weekend’s arrest of veteran journalist Najam Sethi, founder and editor of the English-language weekly newspaper Friday Times. Sethi is the third Pakistani journalist arrested under suspicious circumstances in less than a week, prompting fears that your government is engaged in a campaign to silence the country’s independent press. All three men had been interviewed before their arrest by a BBC television crew preparing a report on high-level official corruption in Pakistan for the program “Correspondent.”
October 8, 1999 – An East Timorese farmer said he witnessed the shooting of Sander Thoenes, a Dutch correspondent killed near Dili last month (map), according to The Christian Science Monitorand wire service reports. Alexandre Estevao said the gunmen wore Indonesian military uniforms with insignia for Battalion 745, a unit of East Timorese known for their…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by two recent violent attacks against journalists investigating corruption in Romania. On September 23, Marian Tudor, a reporter with the daily Jurnalul de Constantain the Black Sea port of Constanta, was assaulted by two unidentified assailants aboard a train traveling from Constanta to Bucharest. Tudor was delivering edited manuscripts for that day’s edition of Jurnalul de Constantato a printer in the capital.
Islamabad, October 6, 1999 – After a two-hour hearing, the Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan dismissed a petition that sought to exclude embattled editor Najam Sethi from political life by having him declared non-Muslim. The petition was filed on June 24 by legislator Syed Zafar Ali Shah, a member of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s ruling…
Islamabad, October 6, 1999 – After a two-hour hearing, the Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan dismissed a petition that sought to exclude embattled editor Najam Sethi from political life by having him declared non-Muslim. The petition was filed on June 24 by legislator Syed Zafar Ali Shah, a member of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s ruling…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is greatly alarmed by your government’s decision to ban nine local publications, many of which had yet to publish their first issue. On October 4, Viktor Guretsky, director of the State Press Committee’s licensing board, canceled the registration of nine Minsk-based publications, claiming they had failed to obtain local authorities’ approval for opening their offices, as required under a provision of the country’s press law. Guretsky claimed that his committee had hitherto enforced the provision only outside Minsk, adding that the publications concerned have one month to seek the needed authorization and reregister.
Your Highness, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a non-governmental organization of journalists devoted to upholding press freedom worldwide, is writing to protest in the strongest terms the conviction and imprisonment of Dr. Ahmad Baghdadi, head of the political science department at Kuwait University and a regular contributor to the daily newspaper Al-Siyassa.