Afghan-Pakistani border off-limits to most journalists By Bob Dietz The Afghanistan-Pakistan border is a critical front in the most challenging news story in the world: the confrontation between U.S.-led Western countries and militant Islamists. Yet access to the border region has become increasingly restricted, and the Pakistani government continues to do everything in its power…
PAKISTAN The military-backed government of President Pervez Musharraf, now in its eighth year, said in 2006 that it was fostering a free press, but the details belied the claim, and journalists continued to be targeted from many sides. While the government has allowed the expansion of broadcast media, a three-person CPJ delegation that met with…
UNITED STATES After consuming the press freedom landscape for more than two years, an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s name wound down with a whimper. News organizations reported in August that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald apparently knew from the day his investigation began in December 2003 that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard…
ALGERIA: 2 Djamel Eddine Fahassi, Alger Chaîne III IMPRISONED: May 6, 1995 Fahassi, a reporter for the state-run radio station Alger Chaîne III and a contributor to several Algerian newspapers, including the now-banned weekly of the Islamic Salvation Front, Al-Forqane, was abducted near his home in the al-Harrache suburb of the capital, Algiers, by four…
New York, January 26, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about journalist Suhail Qalander, who has been missing along with a friend since January 2. His colleagues believe he was kidnapped, possibly in relation to his work as a Peshawar editor of the Daily Express, Pakistan’s second largest Urdu language newspaper. “We join our…
Dear Minister Sherpao and Secretary Shah: The Committee to Protect Journalists is disturbed by the Interior Ministry’s failure to publicly produce investigative records as promised in regard to the deaths of eight journalists and to attacks and detentions involving more than 50 others in Pakistan since 2002.