Mission Journal: South Sudan’s struggle for a free press
The former guerrillas of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) fought a 22-year civil war for greater autonomy and civil rights for the southern Sudanese people, culminating in South Sudan’s independence this July. But local journalists fear the former rebels turned government officials still harbor a war mentality that is unaccustomed to criticism, and that…
The ‘new’ Syrian media law is nothing new
On August 28, President Bashar al-Assad approved a new media law that purportedly upholds freedom of expression and bans the arrest of journalists. Yet less than a week later, on Saturday, a Syrian journalist and contributor to the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat was arrested, CPJ reported. Just two days before the endorsement of the law, Syrian…
On 9/11 and post-conflict Sri Lanka
For a few years now, I have used Sugi Ganeshananthan’s articles as a frame of reference for CPJ advocacy in Sri Lanka. Ganeshananthan, a novelist and essayist who teaches at the University of Michigan, writes stories often grounded in current events. Her 2008 novel, Love Marriage, addresses the cultural and familial conflicts that Sri Lankans…
Spying on media exposes French government’s dark side
“The freedom of the press and the lie of the state.” The headline Thursday in the influential newspaper Le Monde was bound to make a big splash. While President Nicolas Sarkozy was basking in the glory of his Libyan intervention and celebrating the virtues of democracy, the French “paper of record” was denouncing the dark…
In Ecuador, CPJ highlights press freedom decline
The turning point in President Rafael Correa’s aggressive campaign against the private media, Ecuadoran journalists say, came in July with the criminal defamation convictions of four managers of the Guayaquil-based daily El Universo. Bad went to worse when the paper’s former opinion editor and three of its executives were sentenced to jail and fined, along…
A killing field: The targeting of journalists in Pakistan
For the past several weeks, CPJ’s Asia and Journalist Assistance programs have been in regular contact with local and international organizations who are concerned about the rising number of journalists and media workers at risk in Pakistan. CPJ and several other groups are working together on viable, in-country solutions: Journalists in Pakistan are in need…
Catching the Internet’s spies in Iran and elsewhere
In August, Google introduced a new, if rather obscure, security feature to its Chrome web browser, designed to be triggered only under extreme circumstances. If you were talking to Google’s servers using the web’s secure “https” protocol, your browser makes a number of checks to ensure that you are really talking to Google’s servers. Like…
In Spain, police violence against press sparks concern
Spanish press associations have expressed concern about recent episodes of police violence against journalists covering demonstrations against Pope Benedict’s four-day visit to Madrid and protests staged as part of the anti-corruption 15-M movement.
Smashing the hand that holds the pen
Ali Ferzat likes to work through the night. His attackers knew that. Masked men grabbed Syria’s most famous cartoonist as he set out for home from his office near Damascus’ central Umayyad Square at around 5 a.m. on Thursday, and bundled him into a van. A few hours later, he lay in a bloody heap…