New York, February 24, 2009–A journalist who went to interview the minister of the Ministry of National Security (MNB) in Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic on February 20 was blindfolded and interrogated for hours, according to local news reports. The Committee to Project Journalists called today for an immediate investigation into the incident by the central…
New York, February 19, 2009–Three defendants in the October 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya walked free out of the Moscow District Military Court today after a jury unanimously acquitted them of helping to organize the crime, according to local news reports. The state prosecution said it will appeal the verdict.
We issued this statement today after the Russian press reported the brief detention and harassment by Khimki police of two people handing out copies of the independent newspaper Khimkinskaya Pravda, whose editor, Mikhail Beketov, remains hospitalized two months after unknown attackers beat him nearly to death…
New York, February 11, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists called today for Russian authorities to immediately investigate a death threat that was sent to a human rights research center. In an e-mail, a neo-Nazi group threatened to murder a number of journalists and intellectuals in the next year, according to the recipient of the threat.
By Carl Bernstein When the Committee to Protect Journalists was founded in 1981, the prevailing threats to freedom of the press around the world were still from juntas, dictators, authoritarian regimes, and social systems determined to dominate the media as a means of maintaining control over citizens, usually within the boundaries of the nation-state. Toward…
By Joel Simon In 2008, the numbers of journalists killed and jailed both dropped for the first time since the war on terror was launched in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. This is welcome news, but it is tempered by harsh realities. The war on terror had a devastating effect on journalists, and…
Harassment of journalists and self-censorship among the news media intensified before and after a flawed February 2008 presidential election. The countryís authoritarian president, Robert Kocharian, imposed a state of emergency after the balloting to suppress demonstrations and block independent news reporting, a move that allowed him to deliver the presidency to a hand-picked successor, Prime…
The Georgia-Russia crisis in August diverted international attention from another strategically important Caucasus country–oil-rich Azerbaijan. The authoritarian president, Ilham Aliyev, gained a new term in a flawed October 15 vote. Aliyev, who effectively inherited the presidency from his father, Heydar, in 2003, defeated six virtual unknowns after top opposition parties boycotted the October vote to…