On October 27, 2019, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, the country’s nominally independent media regulator, issued an order posted on its official Twitter account prohibiting news anchors from expressing opinions, stating that anchors hosting news programs “should not appear in talk shows,” and saying that news organizations would be held responsible for “any biased,…
Mahmud Tim Kargbo, a freelance reporter in Sierra Leone, was arrested and detained twice in September 2019 after Miatta Samba, an appeals court judge, lodged a complaint with the police against him for a report published September 9, 2019, on his Facebook page and in a WhatsApp group that criticized Samba’s decision to grant bail…
On October 5, 2019, Dominique Dinanga, a reporter for the privately owned Top Congo FM radio station, was attacked by supporters of the ruling Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) party at a rally in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where former Prime Minister Bruno Tshibala was to receive…
On October 19, 2019, at around 8 pm, demonstrators broke into the headquarters of Chilean newspaper El Mercurio de Valparaíso and started a fire that damaged the newspaper’s offices and the offices of La Estrella de Valparaíso, a daily owned by the El Mercurio conglomerate, according to news reports and a report by El Mercurio…
On October 14, 2019, intelligence agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps arrested journalist and activist Roohollah Zam, manager of Amad News, a popular anti-government news channel on the messaging app Telegram, according to a statement by the guard corps that was broadcast on state media.
Owoidoho Udofia and Okodi Okodi, two journalists with the privately owned Inspiration FM radio station in Akwa-Ibom State, in southern Nigeria, on September 24, 2019, were forced by police to take off their shirts and roll on the ground, and were beaten with sticks after covering a protest in Uyo, the state capital, according to…
On September 12, 2019, Lebanese judge Ziad Abu Haidar filed a criminal defamation suit against the Nida al-Watan newspaper as well as its editor-in-chief Beshara Charbel and managing director George Barbari, according to news reports and a report by regional press freedom group Skeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom.
On September 16, 2019, Croatian police arrested Gordan Duhaček, a reporter working for news website Index.hr, as he was about to leave the country at Zagreb airport, and detained him until a court hearing the following day, according to a report by his employer and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.
Police in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, have arrested, investigated, and filed complaints against journalists in several separate incidents since August 31, 2019, according to news reports and the journalists, who spoke to CPJ.
Moroccan security forces arrested Hajar Raissouni, a reporter for independent news website Akhbar al-Youm, on August 31, 2019, as she was leaving her doctor’s office with her fiancé in Rabat, according to her employer and Huffington Post Maghreb. Akhbar al-Youm reported that plainclothes agents also arrested her fiancé, the doctor, and two medical staff from…