New York, October 3, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores local authorities’ ongoing harassment of the independent weekly Permsky Obozrevatel, one of the few sources of independent news in the western Russian city of Perm. “We are deeply concerned by the continuing harassment of Permsky Obozrevatel,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. Perm police detained…
New York, October 3, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by death threats on Islamist Web sites against a controversial commentator for the French daily Le Figaro over an article critical of the Prophet Muhammad. Robert Redeker, a high school philosophy teacher in the southwestern city of Toulouse, has gone into hiding under…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by an intense crackdown on opposition and independent journalists who have been critical of public officials. In particular, we wish to call your attention to the cases of journalists Shakhin Agabeili, Eynulla Fatullayev, Fikret Faramazoglu, and Sakit Zakhidov. In a disturbing trend, several public officials have filed about a dozen politicized lawsuits against critical journalists in the past three months. Among the plaintiffs is Interior Minister Ramil Usubov who filed five defamation lawsuits against Agabeili, Fatullayev and Faramazoglu. We condemn this campaign of harassment of Azerbaijan’s independent press and call on you to do everything within your power to stop it.
New York, September 28, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on U.S. President George W. Bush to raise concerns about Kazakhstan’s deteriorating press freedom record when he meets with his Kazakh counterpart, Nursultan Nazarbayev, at the White House on Friday. White House spokesman Tony Snow called Kazakhstan “an important strategic partner in Central Asia” at…
New York, September 26, 2006–The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by news that Uzbek journalist Dzhamshid Karimov, nephew of the president, has been forced into psychiatric hospitalization. CPJ is also gravely concerned by reports that raise disturbing questions about the treatment of jailed reporter Ulugbek Khaidarov. “We’re shocked at the brutal methods used against…
New York, September 21, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the prosecution for criminal insult of a Russian journalist who satirized President Vladimir Putin’s campaign to boost the birth rate. Vladimir Rakhmankov, editor-in-chief of the independent news Web site Kursiv, went on trial today in the city of Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow,…
New York, September 19, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the disappearance of one independent journalist in the central Uzbek city of Jizzakh and the arrest of another. Dzhamshid Karimov, a former correspondent of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), who wrote critically about both local and federal officials,…