Bearing Witness in Chechnya
Please join us for a free public event examining the killing of Natalya Estemirova, a journalist who exposed human rights crimes in Chechnya. Estemirova was kidnapped in the Chechen capital of Grozny in July 2009 and subsequently murdered.The event, which features readings by Salman Rushdie and other prominent writers, will be held at 7 p.m.…
When the sun set in Nigeria: Dele Giwa’s awful murder
Twenty-three years ago, on October 19, 1986, the sun quite suddenly set at noon. In the brutal darkness, we lost Dele Giwa, just two short years after he and I, along with two other professional journalists, launched Nigeria’s first newsmagazine, Newswatch.
A memorial to killed journalists, a call to action
We’ve launched a new section of our Web site, and we hope you take a few minutes to read some of its pages. There is one, for example, on Russian reporter Natalya Estemirova, who dared to examine human rights crimes in Chechnya. Another is devoted to Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco, a Tijuana newspaper editor who…
Family’s ‘truth teller’ speaks: Kati Marton at CPJ
Author and CPJ board member Kati Marton’s parents worked as foreign correspondents in Budapest during the Cold War in the 1950s, exposing Marton to the grit of living in a Communist state. She described feelings of alienation and displacement she felt as a child to an audience at CPJ’s New York offices today. “We lived…
From a park bench in Havana, Cuban blogger honored in NY
Last night’s scenario was breathtaking: a circular hall with high ceilings, marble columns, tables draped with heavy tablecloths and soft bouquets, and journalism personalities elegant in cocktail dresses and tuxedos. And poised behind a wood podium, a black screen silently reminding all those present of who was not there.
Jailed journalist’s wife hopes for release in time for birth
On Monday, two weeks before her October 26 due date, Paola Gourley, the wife of jailed Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, at left, was rushed to the hospital after she suffered bleeding due to stress. From the London Metropolitan Hospital, her pleas for the release for her husband—who is nearing his 120th day in prison in…
Clinton raises impunity in journalist murders in Russia
When CPJ issued its recent special report Anatomy of Injustice: The Unsolved Killings of Journalists in Russia, we called on world leaders to join us in engaging Russian leaders on human rights, press freedom, and impunity. We were pleased to hear Secretary Hillary Clinton do just that today when she spoke about impunity at a…
Q&A: Wife enters journalism after husband’s murder
The killers of Nigerian Editor Bayo Ohu are still a mystery, three weeks after his murder. Now the family of the former Guardian newspaper journalist lives in fear. Ohu was shot dead early on Sunday morning, September 20, by a gang of five armed men and a woman in his apartment in Egbeda, a Lagos…
In Iran, a blogging insurgency challenges regime
I’m a cartoonist so even when writing a story or working as radio correspondent, I’m checking out the empty half of the glass. As blogger it’s no different; my inner cartoonist lurks in the dark. I’ve followed the Iranian “Bloggistan” since day one, and started my Persian blog after learning how to type. Funny? Not…
A Tunisian blogger speaks out: ‘The candles are lit’
My country’s government brags unabashedly that it has not passed any laws that require government authorization to establish an electronic publication or a Web site or a blog on the Internet. Those that cheerlead for this government rely on this point to propagate the lie they call “the freedom to publish electronically” in Tunisia.