Russia reopens investigation into Beketov attack
New York, November 11, 2010–Russia’s top investigator, Aleksandr Bastrykin, today ordered the reopening of a probe into a near-lethal November 2008 attack on Mikhail Beketov, editor of the independent newspaper Khimkinskaya Pravda. Bastrykin’s order comes a day after a court in the Moscow suburb of Khimki convicted Beketov of criminally slandering local mayor Vladimir Strelchenko.…
Cuban deadline passes for dissident releases: What next?
Sunday marked the end of the four-month deadline Cuban President Raúl Castro had agreed to with representatives of the Cuban Catholic Church and the Spanish government to free 52 prisoners of conscience who remained in jail since the March 2003 crackdown against dissidents, known as the “Black Spring.” The Spanish foreign minister at the time,…
Mayor Strelchenko, drop your cruel complaint
Dear Mayor Strelchenko: While leading a delegation to Moscow from the Committee to Protect Journalists in late September, I had the opportunity to meet with Mikhail Beketov in the Moscow hospital where he was being treated. Today, I was outraged to learn Beketov is now a convicted criminal because you have pursued a cruel complaint.
Beketov convicted of defamation, his assailants still at large
New York, November 10, 2010–A court in the Moscow suburb of Khimki today convicted Mikhail Beketov, the editor of the independent newspaper Khimkinskaya Pravda, of criminally slandering Khimki’s mayor, Vladimir Strelchenko, in a 2007 television interview. Beketov, who is in a wheelchair and unable to speak two years after a near-lethal attack, was wheeled into the courtroom for…
That Nobel invite? Mr. Malware sent it
This weekend, staff at CPJ received a personal invitation to attend the Oslo awards ceremony for Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. The invite, curiously, was in the form of an Adobe PDF document. We didn’t accept. We didn’t even open the e-mail. We did, however, begin analyzing the document to see was really inside…
Moroccan authorities impeding Spanish journalists
New York, November 9, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by an increasing climate of hostility for Spanish journalists in Morocco, highlighted by official measures to prevent Spanish journalists from covering clashes in the Western Sahara. CPJ calls on Rabat to allow journalists to do their work unimpeded.
Help journalists in need: An appeal
Mikhail Beketov is lucky to be alive, although I’m sure there are days when he doesn’t think so. On November 13, 2008, the environmental reporter who campaigned against a highway that would have destroyed a forest in Khimki, a town outside Moscow, was beaten nearly to death by men with metal bars. The attackers made…
In France, is Sarkozy spying on journalists?
Every Wednesday morning in France, rain or shine, half a million people eagerly wait for the satirical weekly, Le Canard Enchainé. Some wait for it nervously. The old-fashioned broadsheet, a venerable media institution that has no real equivalent in other European countries, posts its motto defiantly on its front page: “Freedom of the press wears…
Russian reporters beaten; both covered highway project
New York, November 8, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces two attacks on journalists in the Moscow region and calls on authorities to end impunity in crimes against reporters in Russia. Both victims, Oleg Kashin of the business daily Kommersant and Anatoly Adamchuk of the independent weekly Zhukovskiye Vesti, have covered a contentious highway project…