On April 24, 2009, journalist El Malick Seck, who was serving a three-year prison sentence over an editorial implicating President Abdoulaye Wade and his son in an alleged money laundering scandal, was released on presidential pardon, according to local journalists and news reports. The sentence had been upheld in February. He was first imprisoned on…
“Twitter is a new thing in China. The censors need time to figure out what it is. So enjoy the last happy days of twittering before the fate of YouTube descends on it one day,” veteran Chinese blogger Michael Anti told the media blog Danwei in a May 27 interview.
In response to a story in the Miami daily El Nuevo Herald that Colombian journalists’ e-mails and phone calls with international human rights and press freedom groups, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, were monitored by Colombian national intelligence, we issued the following statement today…
New York, June 1, 2009–The general secretary of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association, Poddala Jayantha, was abducted in Sri Lanka today, beaten, and dropped by the side of a road in a Colombo suburb, according to a release by the association and two colleagues who spoke to him.
The events of 1989, which culminated on June 3 and 4 when the army opened fire on civilians trying to block its approach to the main site of protests at Tiananmen, the “gate of heavenly peace,” are dismissed as riots in official state media accounts. Propaganda officials interpret references to the events as a sign…
Dear Mr. President: The Committee to Protect Journalists is writing ahead of your scheduled speech in Cairo on June 4 to bring to your attention important matters that are crucial to the long-term success of your stated goal of engaging the people–and not just the regimes–of the Arab and Muslim worlds.
New York, June 1, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on all parties to pursue diplomatic efforts to gain the release of detained U.S. journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are facing trial in North Korea this week. The families of the two journalists spoke out this morning on U.S. television to urge diplomatic…