Cubans exiled in Spain: Integration or disintegration?
Desperate realities call for hope. It is not just a game of words, because you don’t play with hunger and the future (my own and my family’s). It is about going deeper into another version of circumstances. And seeing the rainbow where others see a gloomy sun and a stubborn and relentless rain.I am writing…
Brazil, Pakistan, India fail test on journalist murders
Brazil, Pakistan, and India–three nations with high numbers of unsolved journalist murders–failed an important test last month in fighting the scourge of impunity. Delegates from the three countries took the lead in raising objections to a U.N. plan that would strengthen international efforts to combat deadly anti-press violence.
Amid Mexican impunity, paper in the crossfire
It was 3 o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, November 15, 2011, when a car stopped in front of the offices of El Siglo de Torreón, the most widely read newspaper in the northern Mexican states of Coahuila and Durango. The driver pulled the vehicle onto the shoulder, stepped out, poured gasoline on it, and…
Pakistan’s response to UNESCO shows true colors
In case there was any doubt about the stance of Pakistani authorities on the murder of journalists, UNESCO’s 28th biennial session offered an instructive insight. In addition to discussing the U.N. Draft Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity during the meeting, held in Paris in March, member states…
With impunity, more danger ahead for Pakistani press
Pakistani journalists are under threat, and the public is paying the price. The most recent report from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan includes a detailed chapter on freedom of expression, which ties growing suppression to rising incidence of violence and threats against news media. Not coincidentally, Pakistan sits near the top of CPJ’s Impunity…
Chinese censors target tomatoes amid Bo Xilai scandal
Chongqing hotpot = King of the Southwest = King Who Pacifies the West = Minister of Yu = Tomato What do these words have in common? They are all coded references to Bo Xilai, the disgraced former Communist Party leader in southwestern Chongqing, and they were all censored in China on Tuesday, according to the…
UK surveillance plan must be watched carefully
When journalists make enemies in high places, they become vulnerable to the powers those figures wield. One such power is the state’s capacity to wiretap and obtain personal records from communications companies. From Colombia’s phone-tapping scandal to last year’s case of Gerard Davet–a Le Monde reporter whose phone records were obtained by the French intelligence…
Defending the European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights is a victim of its success. In 2011, more than 60,000 people sought its help after exhausting all judicial remedies before national courts. But now, some member states of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe are pushing for reforms of the prestigious institution and are pointing at the number of…
In Boston, journalist Moloney battles to protect sources
In December 2002, the U.N. Tribunal charged with prosecuting war crimes in the former Yugoslavia ruled that Washington Post reporter Jonathan Randal could not be compelled to provide testimony in the case of a Bosnian Serb official accused of carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing.”If war correspondents were to be perceived as potential witnesses…