Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is extremely concerned about an official warning issued by the Russian Media Ministry on Wednesday, February 26, to the Moscow-based communist, ultra-nationalist weekly Zavtra. This warning, which followed the publication of an interview with exiled Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev, is the latest in the Russian government’s…
New York, March 5, 2003—A suspect accused of issuing death threats against Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent with the Moscow-based twice weekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was cleared of the criminal charge against him yesterday. Politkovskaya is well known in Russia for her investigative reports on human rights abuses committed by the Russian military in Chechnya. The…
New York, March 3, 2003—A bomb destroyed the vehicle of Nino Pavic, an influential independent newspaper publisher, on the morning of Saturday, March 1, in Croatia’s capital, Zagreb. According to local and international press reports, the 50-year-old publisher and his family were sleeping in their home in the affluent suburb of Tuskanac when a bomb…
New York, February 28, 2003—Zamid Ayubov, a 40-year-old Chechen journalist for the local pro-Russian administration’s thrice-weekly Vozrozhdeniye Chechni, was beaten and detained by Interior Ministry forces in the Chechen capitol of Grozny on the evening of February 16. Ayubov was assaulted when he approached an Interior Ministry unit and identified himself as a journalist researching…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about two libel lawsuits that have been filed by a senior government official against Elmar Huseynov, the publisher and editor-in-chief of the Baku-based, independent magazine Monitor. These lawsuits are the latest actions in a 7-year-old campaign of official harassment targeting Huseynov and the Monitor…
February 23, 2003—Euskaldunon Egunkaria, a Basque daily based in the northern Spanish town of Andaoin, was closed by government authorities on Thursday, February 20, because of alleged links to the armed separatist group ETA. The paper reappeared on newsstands the next day under the new name Egunkaria. Hundreds of Civil Guard police officers raided the…
New York, February 19, 2003—Vira Kytaihorodska, editor-in-chief of the twice-weekly newspaper Bukovynske Viche in the western city of Chernivtsi, said that a local government official has threatened to kill her for republishing an article on February 7 that accused Chernivtsi regional governor Teofil Bauer of corruption and violating customs regulations. The official, deputy head of…
February 13, 2003 TO: Fausto Alvarado Dodero Minister of Justice of the Republic of Peru Scipión Llona 350, Miraflores Lima, Peru Via facsimile: + 51-1-422-3577 Dear Mr. Alvarado Dodero: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to inquire about the status of journalist Juan de Mata Jara Berrospi, who was sentenced in 1994 to…