Q&A: Pakistan’s Hamid Mir speaks about climate for press freedom following attack
In April, Geo News senior anchor Hamid Mir was shot multiple times shortly after a CPJ delegation met with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who pledged to take several steps to improve journalist security. The investigation into the attack has yielded no accountability. And since the attack, two arrest warrants have been issued by courts in…
Blasphemy charges, threats loom for outspoken journalist in Pakistan
Forty-nine year-old magazine editor and publisher Shoaib Adil fled his home in the eastern city of Lahore last month and went into hiding with his wife and children. Adil faces threats and possible charges of blasphemy–a crime punishable by life imprisonment or death–in connection with a book he published in 2007, written by a judge…
No press freedom without Internet freedom
Four years ago, when CPJ launched its Internet Advocacy program, we were met with lots of encouragement, but also some skepticism. “Why do you need a program to defend the Internet?” one supporter asked. “You don’t have a special program to defend television, or radio, or newspapers.” But the Internet is different. Increasingly, when it…
In Sri Lanka crackdown, mobs and death threats turned on journalists
There is genuine cause for alarm about the anonymous death threats going to Sunil Jayasekara’s phone. They started streaming to Jayasekara, the convener of Sri Lanka’s Free Media Movement, an umbrella group (hence calling the leader a convener) of journalists’ organization in Sri Lanka, just before an FMM press conference on Saturday in Colombo.
Seeking release of Pakistani journalist Faizullah Khan, jailed in Afghanistan
It’s not often that CPJ agrees with the Pakistan government, but here is one of the rare occasions when we do. While Pakistan journalists have been pushing for quite a while for the release of one of their colleagues, Faizullah Khan, being held in Nangahar in Afghanistan, the Islamabad government has apparently been working diplomatic…
An Afghan conviction, but little sense of victory
Naqibullah, the Afghan police commander who killed The Associated Press’ Anja Niedringhaus, has been given a death sentence after being convicted of murder and treason. He was also given a four- year sentence for shooting the AP’s Kathy Gannon. Naqibullah (who goes by one name, as many Afghans do) opened fire at near-point-blank range on…
Harsh defamation ruling in Cambodia has broader implications
New York, July 24, 2014–The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the hefty financial damages imposed on a blogger in a defamation case in Cambodia. The ruling could have a detrimental effect on online commentary in the country.
Critical Chinese blogger given six-year prison term
New York, July 23, 2014–Chinese authorities today sentenced a blogger to more than six years in prison, according to news reports. Dong Rubin, a businessman who has criticized the ruling Communist Party in his blogs, has been in prison since September 2013.
In a growing clampdown, three editors detained in Burma
Bangkok, July 23, 2014–Burmese authorities should drop national security-related charges brought against journalists and staff members of the Bi Mon Te Nay (Bi-Midday Sun) news journal, and release them from pre-trial detention immediately, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.