Indonesian Playboy editor held in high-security prison
Erwin Arnada turned himself in to authorities at Cipinang prison in East Jakarta on October 9 to start serving a two-year sentence for public indecency. His conviction stemmed from pictures he published in a 2006 issue of the now-defunct Indonesian edition of Playboy magazine. On September 30, CPJ called on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and…
Communist Party elders urge end to China’s censorship
Twenty-three senior Communist Party members have published a letter calling for sweeping reforms of China’s media censorship policies. “Our core demand is that the system of censorship be dismantled in favor of a system of legal responsibility,” the letter said, according to an English translation by Hong Kong University’s China Media Project. Widely distributed by e-mail and posted…
A top Kazakhstan diplomat pledges press reforms
Kazakhstan is ready to bring its press laws in line with international standards, a top diplomat told a CPJ delegation in Vienna this week. Decriminalizing libel, placing caps on defamation awards, and enacting access-to-information legislation are on the government’s agenda, said Kazakhstan Ambassador Kairat Abdrakhmanov, who is chairman of the permanent council of the Organization…
As with Norgrove, a need to probe Munadi death
This morning, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that British aid worker Linda Norgrove, who died in a rescue attempt after she was taken hostage in Afghanistan, may have been killed by a U.S. grenade rather than by her Taliban captors, as originally reported.
The high price of writing about the Japanese mafia
“In life, we only encounter the injustices we were meant to correct.” -Igari Toshiro, ex-prosecutor, leading lawyer in the anti-organized crime movement in Japan (1949-2010) Igari Toshiro was my lawyer, my mentor, and my friend. In the sixteen years I’ve been covering organized crime in Japan, I’ve never met anyone more courageous or inspiring–or anyone…
Russian journalists detail FSB and ‘New Nobility’
How do you crack Russia’s vaunted security service? You go to low- and mid-level officials for information, say Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, authors of the new book, The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB. At a luncheon for CPJ supporters on Thursday, Soldatov…
A Golden Pen for Iran’s Zaid-Abadi
The World Association of Newspapers on Wednesday honored the jailed Iranian journalist, Ahmad Zaid-Abadi with its Golden Pen of Freedom Award in the German city of Hamburg. Zaid-Abadi, right, was sentenced in 2009 to six years in prison, five years of internal exile, and a lifetime ban on working as a journalist. He is behind…
Using new Internet filters, Afghanistan blocks news site
Until recently, Afghanistan’s Internet has been notably free of government censorship. That stems largely from the limited impact and visibility of the Net domestically: The Taliban banned the Internet during its rule, and despite a recent boom in use, the nation has only a million users out of a population of about 29 million. But…
Abuja Twitterers chronicle #Nigeriaat50 bomb explosions
A few minutes before deadly explosions ripped through Nigeria’s 50th Independence Day celebration in Abuja on Saturday, Twitter user Achonu Stanley wondered about darkening skies over the festivities: “Would the day be marred by rain? It has become cloudy and dark. Sorry for the thousands of people at Eagle Square.”
