New York, March 7, 2006—Authorities in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia today charged three journalists with entering the self-declared republic illegally to shoot a documentary film, local and international media reported. Journalists Tea Sharia, Georgii Sokhadze and Teimuraza Eliava were arrested March 1 in Abkhazia, a region along the Black Sea in the northwest…
New York, March 7, 2006–Three unidentified men abducted a reporter for the Azerbaijani opposition newspaper Azadlyg on Sunday night, beating him, breaking some of his fingers, and slashing him, according to local and international press reports. The attack on Fikret Huseynli (Huseinli) was likely related to his work, Azadlyg Editor-in-Chief Ganimat Zahidov told reporters at…
New York, March 7, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Philippine authorities’ decision to file charges of inciting sedition against the publisher and two columnists of the Manila-based Daily Tribune newspaper. The government filed the charges against Publisher Ninez Cacho-Olivares and columnists Ike Seneres and Herman Tiu-Laurel on Friday, just three hours after President Gloria…
New York, March 7, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Nepalese authorities’ detention of journalist Jay Gupta, editor and publisher of the Kathmandu-based Uptyaka Daily and the weekly Dishanirdesh. Police arrested Gupta on Friday after his publications reported that a bomb went off near a royal vacation retreat that King Gyanendra and his wife were…
New York, March 7, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is very troubled by the recent harassment of journalists at the independent radio station Choice FM in the town of Gulu, in Uganda’s war-scarred north. Police accused the station of being a security threat after a talk show last Wednesday featuring opposition and ruling party candidates…
New York, March 6, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists called on the Philippine authorities today to work for the release of kidnapped radio commentator Joey Estriber. Four unidentified men seized Estriber on March 3 in Baler, the capital of Aurora province, 125 miles (200 kilometers) northeast of Manila, local media reported. Estriber cried out for…
New York, March 6, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the arrest today on fraud charges of a Venezuelan journalist known for his criticism of state authorities. Gustavo Azócar Alcalá was arrested in the western state of Táchira minutes after finishing a daily show he hosts on the San Cristóbal-based TV station Televisora…
New York, March 6, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned escalating media repression in Belarus ahead of March 19 presidential elections. Iosef Serdiyevich, editor-in-chief of the opposition newspaper Narodnaya Volya, announced at a press conference today that police officers had confiscated 250,000 copies of a special election edition of the newspaper, according to local…
New York, March 3, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the Vietnamese authorities’ recent harassment of two well-known Internet writers, Nguyen Khac Toan and Do Nam Hai. Plainclothes officers on Wednesday detained the two writers at a public Internet café and took pictures of the sites they were viewing, which included the banned Web site…
New York, March 3, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by sedition charges pending against Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of the tabloid weekly Blitz. Choudhury, who spent 17 months in jail before his release on bail in May 2005, is due to be tried in a Dhaka court next week. Choudhury told…