New York, October 31, 2001—The Committee to Protect Journalists today denounced a government raid on the independent Georgian television station Rustavi-2. On October 30, some 30 agents from Georgia’s National Security Ministry raided Rustavi-2’s headquarters in the capital, Tbilisi, in an effort to obtain the station’s financial records. Rustavi-2 is Georgia’s most influential and respected…
New York, October 24, 2001–The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has denounced Prime Minister Milos Zeman for threatening to bankrupt the independent Prague-based weekly Respekt with a series of debilitating lawsuits in retaliation for its criticism of his government. Zeman announced on October 22 that his government was planning to file the suits against Respekt…
New York, October 22, 2001—An ethnic Albanian journalist in Kosovo was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting last Friday, according to local and international reports. Bekim Kastrati, a journalist for the Albanian-language daily Bota Sot, was shot on October 19 at around 8 p.m. in the village of Lausa, west of the provincial capital,…
New York City, October 17, 2001–Two weeks after the September 11 attacks, the number of foreign journalists in Pakistan swelled to an estimated 700. The country’s location alongside Afghanistan, the first target of Washington’s “new war,” made Pakistan a natural destination for journalists. Pakistan An initially lax visa policy–allowing citizens of most Western countries and…
New York, October 17, 2001—CPJ welcomes the release from prison of El’mar Guseynov, founder of the independent Russian-language weekly Bakinskiy Bul’var, and Shahbaz Huduoglu, editor-in-chief of the independent weekly Milletin Sesi. On October 16, CPJ sent a letter to President Heidar Aliyev protesting the cases against the journalists, who were found guilty in September of…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned by your government’s recent use of jailings and forcible closures of media outlets to silence criticism of government officials. In particular, we are alarmed by the imprisonment of El’mar Guseynov, founder of the independent Russian-language weekly Bakinskiy Bul’var, and Shahbaz Huduoglu, editor-in-chief of the independent weekly Milletin Sesi. We are also deeply troubled by the closure of both papers.
New York, October 15, 2001—Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent with Moscow-based newspaper Novaya Gazeta known for her investigative reports on human rights abuses committed by the Russian military in Chechnya, fled to Vienna, Austria, last week. Novaya Gazeta’s deputy editor-in-chief, Sergey Sokolov, told CPJ in a telephone interview today that the threats stemmed from a September…