Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by the ongoing harassment of acclaimed poet and freelance radio journalist Liu Hongbin. Liu, who lives in exile in the United Kingdom, has been banned from returning to China to visit his mother, who has fallen seriously ill.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about attacks on press freedom in the autonomous Puntland region of northeast Somalia, of which you were elected president by the region’s parliament in January. They include the arrests of two journalists from the weekly newspaper Shacab (Voice of the People) in the town of Garowe; threats to close that newspaper; plans to introduce identity cards for all journalists; and attempts to censor radio coverage of sensitive political issues.
New York, May 3, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns today’s attacks by police on journalists in the cities of Lahore and Islamabad. During peaceful demonstrations in honor of World Press Freedom Day, approximately 50 journalists were injured when police baton-charged demonstrators marching in the center of Lahore, and as many as 60 journalists were…
MAY 2, 2005 Updated: May 26, 2005 Omo-Ojo Orobosa, Midwest Herald LEGAL ACTION, IMPRISONED Omo-Ojo Orobosa, publisher of the weekly Midwest Herald, was imprisoned for more than two weeks and accused of sedition after his publication accused First Lady Stella Obasanjo of corruption. His lawyer, Festus Keyamo, told CPJ that Orobosa was arrested at the…
New York, May 2, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release on bail Saturday of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor and publisher of the now-defunct weekly tabloid Blitz. Choudhury spent 17 months behind bars awaiting trial on sedition and antistate charges, despite repeated requests for bail. “While we are relieved that our colleague Salah…
New York, May 2, 2005—A Belarusian court granted early release Saturday to two Russian journalists arrested last week while covering an opposition demonstration in the capital, Minsk, that marked the anniversary of the April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The journalists were freed along with 12 Russians who participated in the rally, according to local and…
New York, May 2, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned Chinese authorities’ refusal to allow journalist Cheng Yizhong to receive a United Nations press freedom award on Tuesday. Cheng, who was imprisoned for five months in 2004 after his aggressive investigative journalism angered local officials, was ordered not to attend a ceremony honoring him…
New York, May 2, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists today denounced the unfair trial and harsh sentencing of journalist Shi Tao, who was convicted of “illegally providing state secrets to foreigners” in a closed trial in the Intermediate People’s Court of Changsha in central China’s Hunan Province. Shi was sentenced on Saturday to 10 years…
New York, May 2, 2005—A March 4 shooting in Baghdad in which U.S. forces killed Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari and wounded Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena and agent Andrea Carpani might have been avoided if the military had used basic warning measures such as signs and speed bumps to alert civilians to the presence of…
MAY 2005 Posted October 18, 2005 Samir Mohammed Noor, Reuters IMPRISONED Reuters reported that its freelance television cameraman Noor was arrested by Iraqi troops at his home in the northern town of Tal Afar in May 2005 and was ordered detained indefinitely by the CRRB, which oversees detentions in Iraq.