New York, September 30, 2003—Hiramon Mondol, a local correspondent for the daily Dainik Prabarttan, was released from jail and exonerated from extortion charges on September 20 by the Magistrate of the Special Tribunal Act in Khulna, a town in southwestern Bangladesh, according to local news reports. Police and security forces brutally attacked Mondol with hockey…
New York, September 22, 2003—Parmanand Goyal, a journalist with the daily Punjab Kesari, was shot and killed by three unidentified assailants at his home on September 18 in Kaithal, Haryana, north of the capital, Delhi, according to local press reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is investigating the motives behind his murder. According India’s…
New York, September 19, 2003—Indonesia’s Central Jakarta District Court is scheduled to deliver a verdict on Tuesday, September 23 in a case involving police negligence in a March disturbance that injured several journalists. The Jakarta chapter of the Alliance for Independent Journalists’ (AJI) filed the suit on behalf of Tempo magazine journalists. According to AJI’s…
New York, September 19, 2003—Sitaram Baral, the assistant editor of the weekly Janaastha, was released from detention by Nepalese security forces on Wednesday, September 17, according to local journalists. Four days earlier, however, local sources told CPJ that security forces arrested another journalist, Premnath Joshi, editor of the monthly English-language magazine Shangrila Voice. Baral was…
New York, September 17, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned by the recent murder of Japanese freelance journalist Satoru Someya and is conducting an investigation to determine if he was killed for his work. On September 12, police found Someya’s body near a pier in Tokyo Bay. The exact time of his…
New York, September 15, 2003— The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the recent wave of attacks on journalists by government security forces and by Maoist rebel forces in Nepal. Since rebels broke a cease-fire agreement on August 27, reports of journalists being kidnapped, arrested, threatened, and even murdered have risen dramatically. According to local…
New York, September 8, 2003—Gyanendra Khadka, a journalist with the government news agency Rastriya Samachar Samiti (RSS), was killed on Sunday, September 7, in Jyamire, in Nepal’s eastern Sindhupalchowk District. CPJ is investigating the incident. According to RSS, a group of suspected Maoist rebels took Khadka away from a school where he taught part-time and…
New York, September 8, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the recent spate of attacks on journalists in the Philippines. CPJ is currently investigating the murders of three reporters killed during the last three weeks. In the most recent incident, journalist Juan “Jun” Pala was killed in the southern city of Davao on Saturday,…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns last month’s brutal assault and arrest of Hiramon Mondol, a local correspondent for the daily Dainik Prabarttan in the southwestern town of Khulna, and calls for his immediate release from jail. This case is emblematic of the risks that rural journalists face in Bangladesh, and those responsible must be brought to justice.