2008

NOVEMBER 24, 2008 Mutombo Kayeba, Africa TV Jean-Claude Bode, Tropicana TV Jose Ngalamulume, Global TV Olivier Mongilu, Congoweb TV Yves Songila, Horizon 33 TV  ATTACKED  

Fitting honors for those who risk their lives to do their jobsThe Washington PostNovember 21, 2008 Plainclothes Ugandan police officers descended yesterday on the newsroom of the weekly newsmagazine the Independent, seizing computer documents and attempting to deliver an arrest warrant to managing editor Andrew M. Mwenda. “Unluckily, I was out of Uganda,” Mr. Mwenda…

New York, November 21, 2008–A Burmese court sentenced entertainer, blogger, and activist Maung Thura–known by his stage name, “Zarganar”–to 45 years in prison today for violations of the Electronics Act, according to Burmese rights groups and international news reports. Sports journalist Zaw Thet Htwe, and two other defendants were also sentenced to at least 15…

New York, November 21, 2008–A decision to order the arrest of renowned Colombian journalist Alejandro Santos Rubino is an act of censorship, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. A Bogotá judge ordered the arrest of Santos, the director of the national weekly newsmagazine Semana, for failing to follow the court’s instructions in a defamation…

New York, November 21, 2008–A court in China’s southwestern Sichuan province sentenced a writer critical of the government to three years in prison today on charges of inciting subversion of state power, his wife told the Committee to Protect Journalists. 

In response to Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Dmitry Fedorov’s announcement today about the progress of the official Kyrgyz investigation into the October 2007 murder of ethnic Uzbek journalist Alisher Saipov, we released the following statement…

CPJ’s 2008 International Press Freedom awardees, who were officially announced yesterday at a press conference in Washington, are making news today–including editor Andrew Mwenda, who was concurrently issued an arrest warrant in his home country of Uganda.

CPJ’s Monica Campbell is interviewed today on NPR’s “People and Places” about the recent murder of crime reporter Armando Rodriguez and the worsening situation for Mexican journalists. She is joined by journalist Arturo Chacon.Visit NPR.org to listen to the report.

New York, November 20, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Mexican authorities today to protect journalists in the border town of Ciudad Juárez after one journalist was forced to flee and another was murdered. 

Washington, November 20, 2008–On the day Ugandan editor Andrew Mwenda was introduced here as a recipient of a CPJ International Press Freedom Award, police back home summoned the journalist for questioning over his magazine’s hard-hitting political coverage.