Europe & Central Asia

New York, May 15, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to veto a bill that would reverse efforts to reform Kyrgyzstan’s state television and radio company (KTR) into a public broadcaster. Kyrgyzstan’s parliament passed the bill on April 24. It gives the president the right to appoint KTR’s chief…

Dear Mr. President, On the third anniversary of the May 13, 2005, massacre of civilians by Uzbek security forces in the city of Andijan, the Committee to Protect Journalists–an independent, nonpartisan organization that defends journalist rights worldwide–calls on you and your government to cease your unrelenting repression of Uzbekistan’s independent and opposition media.

New York, May 9, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by continuing attacks on Agil Khalil, a reporter with the Azerbaijani opposition daily Azadlyg (Freedom). On Wednesday afternoon, at least two unidentified men tried to push Khalil onto the tracks of a Baku subway. Later that same day, two young men tried to kidnap…

Iraqi Kurdish political leaders have cultivated an image of freedom and tolerance, but that increasingly clashes with reality. As the independent press has grown more assertive, attacks and arrests have increased.

New York, May 1, 2008–An amendment that would allow the Russian courts to close media outlets for publishing defamatory statements has made its way through the parliament’s lower house, according to local press reports. On April 25, the State Duma approved on a first reading a restrictive bill that would add the dissemination of “deliberately…

May 2008 News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

Journalists from Sierra Leone, Russia, and the Philippines describe the failure of justice and the effect on their work.

CPJ’s Impunity Index ranks countries where killers of journalists go free New York, April 30, 2008 — Democracies from Colombia to India and Russia to the Philippines are among the worst countries in the world at prosecuting journalists’ killers according to the Impunity Index, a list of countries compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists…

New York, April 24, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern today at the harassment in Chechnya of Jane Armstrong, Moscow correspondent for the Canadian national daily The Globe and Mail. Armstrong and her Russian photographer and interpreter Olga Kravets had traveled from Moscow to the Chechen capital of Grozny to report on social and…

New York, April 24, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern today at the harassment in Chechnya of Jane Armstrong, Moscow correspondent for the Canadian national daily The Globe and Mail. Armstrong and her Russian photographer and interpreter Olga Kravets had traveled from Moscow to the Chechen capital of Grozny to report on social and…