Asia

New York, July 16, 2009–North Korea should grant amnesty to U.S. journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who have now been jailed four months following their arrest on the North Korean-Chinese border, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, July 16, 2009–Distributors blocked the July 4-10 edition of The Economist from entering Thailand for an article that covered the mounting threat of lese majeste complaints to the country’s Internet freedom and freedom of expression, according to a local distributor and international news reports. 

More than 100 prominent journalists from 47 countries sent a petition to the Iranian government today calling for the immediate release of Maziar Bahari, Newsweek’s Tehran correspondent, who has been held without charge in an Iranian jail since June 21. Compiled by CPJ, Index on Censorship, and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, the petition was…

New York, July 14, 2009–The Sri Lankan government is continuing its offensive against the independent news media, blocking domestic access to a news Web site and smearing lawyers who are representing a leading newspaper.

New York, July 13, 2009–Chinese police should halt the detentions of journalists reporting on ethnic violence in Xinjiang and reveal the whereabouts of a Uighur academic and Internet commentator who is missing and reportedly detained in Beijing, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, July 13, 2009–The house of a second Pakistani journalist working in the border area with Afghanistan was looted and burned on Saturday, according to the Khyber Union of Journalists (KhUJ). The attack was similar to one carried out by Taliban militants on Thursday in the same district, which has been an area of…

New York, July 10, 2009–The home of Voice of America (VOA) correspondent Rahman Bunairee in Buner district was leveled by a bomb on Thursday in what was believed to be a retaliatory attack by the Taliban, news reports said.

Local police beat three photographers in two separate incidents on June 18, 2009, in India’s West Bengal state. They were covering a government offensive by police and paramilitary forces trying to break a four-day siege of the Lalgarh area by Maoist insurgents, according to local news reports.

Chinese authorities have, unusually, welcomed foreign reporters to Xinjiang since ethnic rioting broke out on Sunday in Urumqi between the Uighur minority and Han Chinese. A Beijing-based agency has even offered to facilitate travel, according to one writer who blogs from Shanghai. (CPJ hasn’t confirmed his story. Have any other reporters been approached in this…

Security forces were protecting, rather than harassing, international journalists covering riots in northwestern Xinjiang this week–a welcome change. A few have reported official interference since Sunday. But during previous outbursts of ethnic unrest in China’s Tibetan and Uighur autonomous regions, security forces have repeatedly antagonized and expelled the foreign press corps. Foreign reporters this week…