Dear President Rajapaksa, The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by your government’s policies toward journalists who write critically about the conflict between Sri Lanka’s military forces and Tamil secessionists. We have seen an increase in harassment, intimidation, and detention of reporters, many of whom are columnists in senior positions with well-established careers. Police have failed to investigate threats to journalists who cover elections or expose alleged corruption or misdeeds. They have also never investigated the death of a television journalist.
New York, June 13, 2008—Chinese police arrested Internet writer Zeng Hongling in Chengdu, the capital of the earthquake-hit province of Sichuan, on Monday for publishing personal accounts of the earthquake on overseas Chinese-language Web sites, according to news reports and a Chinese press freedom advocate. Three days later, a well-known Internet publisher and human rights…
Dear President Karzai, News reports have described your plan to present a $50 billion, long-term development strategy to international donors in Paris on Thursday. Those reports have also noted the concerns of international donors about allegations of widespread corruption in Afghanistan.
Dear President Karzai, News reports have described your plan to present a $50 billion, long-term development strategy to international donors in Paris on Thursday. Those reports have also noted the concerns of international donors about allegations of widespread corruption in Afghanistan.
New York, June 10, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the detention of Dam Sith, editor-in-chief of the opposition-aligned, Khmer-language daily newspaper Moneakseka Khmer. Dam Sith was arrested on Sunday by plainclothes police at a car wash and interrogated for several hours at the national military police headquarters in the capital, Phnom Penh. A criminal…
New York, June 9, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists joins with the family and colleagues of Afghan journalist Abdul Samad Rohani in mourning his death, and calls on the recently appointed governor of Helmand province, Gulab Mangal, to press investigators to find his killers. Rohani disappeared on Saturday near Lashkar Gah, Helmand’s capital. He was…
New York, June 9, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned a militant group’s abduction of three journalists from Philippine network ABS-CBN in the southern Philippine province of Sulu on Sunday. ABS-CBN news head Maria Ressa provided CPJ with an official statement today confirming that journalist Ces Drilon, cameraman Jimmy Encarnacion, and assistant cameraman Angelo Valderama…
New York, June 6, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned that China has begun to restrict local and foreign coverage of the aftermath of the May 12 earthquake. Several international media outlets have reported the harassment and temporary detention of reporters at the hands of local officials. The moves come after a brief period…
New York, June 6, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the legal harassment of BBC correspondent Jonathan Head in Thailand. A high-ranking police official, Lt. Col. Wattanasak Mungkandee, has filed two separate criminal complaints alleging that the journalist insulted the monarchy—charges that Head and the BBC have called unfounded. Thai law allows any…
New York, June 5, 2008—A Philippine court today convicted newspaper editor and publisher Ninez Cacho-Olivares on libel charges stemming from a 2003 article about a politically prominent lawyer, according to news reports. The regional court in Makati, outside the capital, Manila, sentenced Cacho-Olivares to an indeterminate prison sentence of six months to two years and…