2018

Washington, D.C., August 16, 2018–The Malaysian parliament today repealed a law imposing criminal penalties for “fake news” that had been enacted earlier this year by the previous government of Prime Minister Najib Razak, according to news reports.

Voice of America Mandarin Service correspondent Yibing Feng and his Chinese assistant, Allen Ai, were detained for about six hours on August 13, 2018, by security personnel after they tried to conduct an interview in Jinan, Shandong Province.

New York, August 13, 2018– Mohammad Daud Anwari, a media technician for the state-run broadcaster Radio Television Afghanistan, was killed on August 10 during an attack by the Taliban on Tape-e-Television, an area of Ghazni city where many local media antennas are located, the Afghan Journalist Safety Committee (AJSC) reported.

New Delhi, August 9, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned a brutal attack on photojournalist Pravin Indrekar by police in the Indian state of Gujarat, and called on the state authorities to withdraw charges of looting and rioting that police filed against him.

New York, August 9, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Maldives authorities to withdraw fines against and stop targeting the opposition-aligned broadcaster Raajje TV. The Maldives Broadcasting Commission yesterday fined Raajje TV 2 million Maldivian rufiyaa (US$130,000)– the largest amount it can impose– for airing a politician’s statement made at an opposition demonstration…

Four years to the day that Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla was last seen by his family, President Abdulla Yameen Abdulla Gayoom declared the Maldives journalist dead.

On July 29, two students were killed, and 12 others injured when a bus plowed into a passengers waiting at a stop in Dhaka. Since then, daily demonstrations that started in Dhaka have spread throughout Bangladesh. Thousands of students have demonstrated on the streets of Dhaka at major traffic intersections, causing congestion that has nearly…

New York, August 6, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Bangladeshi authorities to immediately halt widespread attacks on journalists covering ongoing student protests in Dhaka and to release photographer Shahidul Alam from jail.

New York, August 5, 2018–A group of men who said they were from the detective branch of Dhaka police today took Shahidul Alam, a photographer, commentator, and the founder of the Bangladeshi multimedia organization Drik and Pathshala Media Institute, from his home, hours after he posted a video to Facebook about protests in the city,…

New York, August 3, 2018–A Maldives criminal court yesterday acquitted two men accused of abducting Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla, a reporter for the news website Minivan News, who has been missing since August 2014, according to news reports. The court found Alif Rauf and Mohamed Nooradeen not guilty of forcing Rilwan into a car at knife-point,…