AFGHANISTAN: 1 Ali Mohaqqiq Nasab, Haqooq-i-Zan (Women’s Rights) Imprisoned: October 1, 2005 The attorney general ordered editor Nasab’s arrest on blasphemy charges after the religious adviser to President Hamid Karzai, Mohaiuddin Baluch, filed a complaint about his magazine. “I took the two magazines and spoke to the Supreme Court chief, who wrote to the attorney…
BURMA International pressure goaded Burma’s ruling military junta into releasing several journalists and hundreds of political prisoners in 2005. But five journalists were among the more than 1,300 remaining detainees, and Nobel Peace Prize–winner Aung San Suu Kyi was still under house arrest. On January 3, the junta released journalists Thein Tan and Ohn Kyaing,…
BANGKOK, ThailandAfter Burmese troops fired on democracy demonstrators in August 1988, Aung Zaw, a student who had already been jailed for helping to publish pro-democracy pamphlets, fled into the jungle. Seventeen years later he has yet to return home. Aung Zaw, a pseudonym, is a senior member of a vibrant community of Burmese journalists in…
New York, July 6, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release today of two imprisoned Burmese journalists, documentary filmmaker Aung Pwint and freelance journalist Sein Hla Oo. Burma’s military government released more than 240 prisoners today, including several prominent political prisoners, according to a spokesman from the opposition National League for Democracy party (NLD).…
MAY 7, 2005 Posted: May 17, 2005 All Journalists CENSORED Burma’s military rulers restricted coverage of casualties from bomb blasts at two shopping malls and a trade center in the capital Rangoon. Exiled Burmese news sources reported that the government censored blast-related stories in the local media, while medical workers told international reporters that authorities…
When U.S.-led forces waged an offensive in Fallujah in November and a state of emergency was declared, the Iraqi interim government’s Higher Media Commission directed the media to “set aside space in your news coverage to make the position of the Iraqi government, which expresses the aspirations of most Iraqis, clear.” Those that didn’t comply…