Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about the deteriorating press freedom climate in Cameroon following the detention of three journalists from Cameroon’s only independent daily, Mutations, and the closure of the private radio station Magic FM. On April 13, the Société de presse et d’édition du Cameroun (Sopécam), a state-owned printing…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is outraged by the death of Nazih Darwazeh, a Palestinian cameraman working with The Associated Press Television News (APTN), who was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Nablus on Saturday, April 19. Darwazeh was shot in the head at close range…
New York, April 22, 2003—Afghan officials announced yesterday that they have arrested five men suspected of involvement in the murder of four journalists killed in an ambush in southeastern Afghanistan on November 19, 2001. Azizullah Haidari, an Afghan photographer for the Reuters news agency; Harry Burton, an Australian cameraman for Reuters; Julio Fuentes, a Spanish…
New York, April 22, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned about the health of Zouhair Yahyaoui, an imprisoned Tunisian Internet journalist who began a hunger strike on March 29 to protest his prison conditions. According to a family member who visited Yahyaoui last week, the journalist was placed, naked, in solitary confinement…
New York, April 18, 2003—Russian journalist Dmitry Shvets, head of the independent television station TV-21 Northwestern Broadcasting in the northern Russian city of Murmansk, was shot dead today outside of the station’s offices. The motive is unclear. Police have launched an investigation, but no details were available. CPJ will continue to monitor the case.
Your Majesty: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to protest the recent harassment and physical attacks on independent journalists in Morocco. Ali Lmrabet, director of two independent Casablanca-based weeklies, the French-language Demain and its Arabic sister publication Douman, has been subjected to an organized campaign of legal harassment by government authorities.
New York, April 16, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urges Nigeria’s newly elected lawmakers to pass the Freedom of Information Bill, which has stalled in the Lower House of Parliament for more than three years. The bill, first proposed in December 1999 and modeled after the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, is endorsed by…
New York, April 15, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) mourns the death of Argentine camerawoman Veronica Cabrera. She is the first female journalist to die while covering the war in Iraq. Her death brings the total number of journalists killed in this conflict to 13. Cabrera, who was traveling with fellow America TV correspondent…
New York, April 14, 2003—In response to a March 6 letter from the Committee to Protect Journalists to U.S. secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Victoria Clarke, assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs said: “We share your desire to have news reported from the battlefield that is unfettered, timely and accurate, and we have made…
New York, April 14, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) mourns the death of Mario Podestá, a veteran free-lance Argentine war correspondent on assignment for the Argentine television station America TV, who was killed today in a car accident on the highway between Amman, Jordan, and Baghdad. Eduardo Cura, the station’s news director, told CPJ…