2009
Editor injured in latest media assault
New York, January 23, 2009–President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government must act to stem a worsening security crisis in the media in the wake of another attack on a Sri Lankan newspaper editor outside the capital, Colombo, this morning, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
Murder pushes Novaya Gazeta to request guns
In a November 2007 interview, just before receiving CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, Dmitry Muratov, the editor of the embattled Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, recalled the loss of three colleagues to work-related murders in six years. “We have suffered war-like casualties,” Muratov said.
Press freedom in the news 1/23/2009
Our alert released yesterday about the landmark decision to convict three Colombian officials in the 2003 murder of radio commentator José Emeterio Rivas is receiving coverage around the world today. The Associated Press has stories in both English and Spanish and the Swedish-language Medie Varlden newspaper has coverage.
In landmark case, ex-officials convicted in slaying
New York, January 22, 2009–The convictions of three former public officials on charges of plotting the 2003 murder of Colombian radio commentator José Emeterio Rivas represent a historic step forward in the campaign to end impunity in the killings of journalists, CPJ said today. The three are the first masterminds to be convicted and imprisoned…
How diamond rings silence Zimbabwe’s foreign press
The Hong Kong police announced on Monday they would investigate the alleged assault on photographer Richard Jones by Zimbabwe’s first lady, Grace Mugabe, while she was on vacation. On January 15, Jones claimed Mugabe ordered her bodyguard to hold the photographer down while she punched him repeatedly in the face near Hong Kong’s exclusive Shangri-la…
Press freedom in the news 1/21/2009
Agence France-Presse has coverage of our letter sent to Cameroonian President Paul Biya on January 16. The letter protested the jailing of four Cameroonian journalists, which makes the country Africa’s second-leading jailer of journalists. The reporters have been held since September on charges of criminal defamation. AFP quotes CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon: “The journalists…
After the cease-fire in Gaza
Although Israeli military operations have officially come to an end in Gaza, access for journalists has improved only marginally. Despite a December 31 ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court (on the fifth day of military operations) to allow eight journalists to enter Gaza each time the Erez crossing was opened, the government failed to implement the…
Internet journalist beaten in Almaty
New York, January 20, 2008–Several unidentified assailants attacked Yermek Boltai, a reporter and editor for the Web site of the Kazakh service of the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, in Kazakhstan’s financial capital of Almaty on Sunday, the broadcaster reported. The assailants reportedly did not take any of the editor’s valuables, including his money…
Journalist, human rights lawyer shot dead in Moscow
New York, January 20, 2009–A reporter for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and a prominent human rights lawyer whose clients included murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya were both shot and killed on Monday. At around 3 p.m., Anastasiya Baburova, 25, and Stanislav Markelov, 34, were walking together toward a metro stop in Moscow after a press…
Letter from Mogadishu: Working where violence is normal
On Friday, as we welcomed the release of a journalist kidnapped in Somalia, we received a compelling account from a freelance reporter working in the capital, Mogadishu. Our colleague describes the perils of working in a city where journalists operate at the mercy of warring insurgents and government troops, and throughout Somalia, one of the world’s…