New York, May 17, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed that Colombian journalist Pedro Antonio Cárdenas Cáceres was forced to flee his hometown after getting death threats in the wake of his reports on government corruption in central Tolima province. Cárdenas, director of the biweekly La Verdad in the city of Honda, left for…
MAY 13, 2006 Posted: June 1, 2006 Víctor Lara Martínez, ¡Por Esto! HARASSED Lara, a reporter for the Mérida-based daily Por Esto!, was detained at 6 p.m. on May 13 while covering a meeting at the local chamber of commerce. He was held for 17 hours at a local police station after being accused of…
MAY 8, 2006 Posted: May 12, 2006 Hugo Basso, La Tribuna ATTACKED Basso, director of the Rufino-based weekly La Tribuna, was attacked by a local official after taking his photograph at a municipal meeting in the central province of Santa Fé, according to news reports and an interview with the journalist.
MAY 10, 2006 Posted: May 12, 2006 Luís Bahamonde, Correo Eliana Villavicencio, Correo THREATENED Bahamonde and Villavicencio, editor and reporter respectively for the Lima-based daily Correo in the northwestern city of Trujillo, were threatened with death by an anonymous caller after reporting on the arrest of members of a local drug cartel.
May 2, 2006 Posted: May 8, 2006 Camelo Luís de Sá, Quiterianópolis FM ATTACKED Sá, a reporter with the community radio station Quiterianópolis FM in the northeastern state of Ceará, was shot twice in the arm at the station’s offices, according to the local news agency Agencia Nordeste. Sá is known for criticizing the local…
MAY 8, 2006 Posted: June 1, 2006 Octavio Carvajal, STC Noticias HARASSED Carvajal, host of the opinion program “Zonas de Debates” and the news show “Más que Noticias” for the Tegucigalpa-based radio station STC Noticias, was attacked and threatened by an official of the local telecommunications company Hondutel. Carvajal believes the attack was motivated by…
Could you pick out Equatorial Guinea on the world map? Or Turkmenistan, or Eritrea? Probably not at the first attempt. These countries are usually below the radar of the international media, and the autocrats who run them like it that way. It helps them crush press freedoms and keep their population in the dark. That is why the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based press freedom group, has drawn up a league table of the world’s 10 most censored countries. We hope that the list, issued on World Press Freedom Day, will shine a light into the dark corners of the world where governments and their political cronies decide what people will read, see, and hear.
New York, May 5, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the criminal defamation conviction of Venezuelan journalist Henry Crespo, who was handed an 18-month suspended jail term after reporting on government corruption. Crespo, a reporter for the Caracas-based weekly Las Verdades de Miguel, was sentenced by the Caracas Eighteenth Tribunal on Wednesday. The…