New York, February 25, 2016 — A recent decision by the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court to strike down laws providing for criminal penalties for defamation is a step forward in the fight to eliminate criminal defamation laws in the Americas, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ called on Dominican authorities to strike all…
Abuja, Nigeria, February 25, 2016–Nigerian authorities should investigate claims that a businessman threatened freelance journalist Augustina Armstrong-Ogbonna over her investigation into his company, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
New York, February 24, 2016–A news editor for the Kurdish-language daily Azadiya Welat, who had been trapped with a gunshot wound in Cizre since January 22, has died. Authorities used DNA testing to identify the remains of Rohat Aktaş, local reports said today. The exact circumstances of his death are unclear. Pro-opposition and pro-Kurdish media…
When Mahfuz Anam, editor of one of Bangladesh’s most respected newspapers, admitted recently to a lapse in editorial judgment several years ago, he could not have predicted the legal backlash that would ensue. Anam’s admission that he published unsubstantiated information accusing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of corruption has led to a barrage of defamation and…
New York, February 23, 2016–A court in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday convicted a suspect of murdering journalist Soleil Balanga in April 2015, in Équateur province, according to a press release issued today by Journaliste en Danger, a Congolese press freedom organization. The High Court of Boende found Moussa Tendenle guilty of having…
New York, February 22, 2016–Mexican journalist Moisés Dagdug Lutzow, who owned media company Grupo VX, was stabbed to death in his home in Villahermosa, Tabasco state, Saturday, local news reports said. Dagdug presented a weekly program for the company’s television station TVX.
New York, February 22, 2016 — Syrian freelance journalist Majid Dirani was killed on February 19 by Syrian military tank shells while covering fighting in a suburb of Damascus, one of his employers, Anadolu Agency, and other news outlets reported.