The Sudanese weekly Al-Maidan was not issued on February 10, 2009, because of official censorship, Abdul Qadir Muhammad, a reporter for the newspaper told CPJ in an e-mail. Muhammad wrote that the Sudanese security staff responsible for censorship omitted six articles and the banner headline on the front page and at least 10 articles in…
An appeals court in the Senegalese capital of Dakar upheld a three-year prison sentence against imprisoned editor El Malick Seck on February 23, 2009, according to international and local news reports. The case involved an editorial implicating President Abdoulaye Wade and his son Karim in an alleged money-laundering scandal.
Early in the morning of February 9, 2009, about 25 gunshots were fired from at least one assault rifle at the home of Moíses García Castro, editor-in-chief of the Guasave-based daily El Debate in the western Mexican state of Sinaloa, according to local news reports and CPJ interviews. There was minor damage to the house…
According to the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, Noorul Hasan, Royal TV’s Peshawar bureau chief, was kidnapped on February 8, when a group of armed men in two cars stopped his car while he and his crew were returning from Swat in North West Frontier Province. The others were not harmed, but Hasan said he…
Algerian police confiscated journalist Mohamed Benchicou’s new manuscript, The Journal a Free Man, from a printing plant in Blida, south of Algiers. In a statement posted on several news Web sites, Benchicou said security forces raided the printer and ordered the director to cease the printing job. The raid came a few days before Algeria…
Unidentified gunmen fired several times at radio journalist Charie “Che” Indelible near his boarding house in the town of Kalibo, Aklan province, on January 2, 2009, according to the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility and local news reports. The reason for the attack on the director and anchor of DYYM Hot FM, a government-run…
While covering a demonstration in Amman, Jordan, on January 9, 2009, against Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip, riot police attacked an Al-Jazeera crew, the network reported. Bureau Chief Yassir Abu Hilala, and cameramen Malik al-Laham, Muhammad al-Huwaiti, and Safwan al-Awawida were all treated at a local hospital.
OCTOBER 27, 2008 Le Mbadja Le Scribouillard CENSORED The National Communications Council (CNC) suspended bimonthly Le Mbadja and weekly Le Scribouillard from circulation for allegedly violating journalism ethics, according to journalists in the capital, Libreville. The suspension occurred one week after the CNC asked editors from 11 newspapers to stop using nicknames for politicians. Guy…
January 4, 2009 Colin Freeman, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Telegraph José Cendon, freelance ABDUCTED Freeman, a British foreign correspondent for London’s Sunday Telegraph, and Cendon, a Spanish freelance photojournalist, were released January 4 after four weeks in captivity, according to multiple reports.
SEPTEMBER 29, 2008 Extra HARASSED A group of armed men forcefully bought more than 30,000 copies of the September 29 issue of the Rio de Janeiro-based daily Extra in various parts of the city’s metropolitan area, said reports in the local press. According to a story on Extra’s Web site, the assailants were attempting to…