In Pakistan conflict, grave risks for reporters
The September 30 Daily Times in Pakistan headlined a story “Peace being gradually restored in Swat,” although daily skirmishes continue between the military and militants. A few days earlier, a massive car bomb in the heart of Peshawar killed at least 10 people and left some 70 wounded, while an explosion destroyed a police station…
Gabon’s bloggers struggle to take hold
It’s been a couple of weeks since I left Gabon, and a month since elections to pick a successor to Omar Bongo, who ruled Africa’s fourth-largest oil producer for 41 years. There are unresolved questions about the ballot count and the number of people killed in post-election violence.
A journalist in the hands of Somali pirates
Shadows of emerging skyscrapers in a neighborhood in Nairobi come alive as the sun glides down the western horizon. I am walking down one of the deserted streets in the city’s Eastleigh shantytown. Lately, Eastleigh has become a contradiction of sorts. While the roads remain as torn as ever and clean drinking water and other…
Honduran radio station goes online after suspension
Early Monday morning, military and police personnel forcefully shut down the Tegucigalpa-based Radio Globo under a decree by the de facto government that suspends civil liberties, CPJ reported. Today, Honduran and international media outlets said the radio station was being broadcast online.
CPJ makes headway in cases in Russia, Georgia
Amid ongoing attacks on journalists, CPJ advocacy in Europe and Central Asia has generated some positive results. Earlier this month, a CPJ delegation met with Russian and European officials, who promised to revisit 17 journalist murders in Russia since 2000. The declared commitment to reverse Russia’s grim record of impunity came after we presented our…
Russia, EU tell CPJ they will act on Russian murders
On September 15, a CPJ delegation released a special report in Moscow on impunity in journalist killings committed in Russia under the country’s current leadership. The report, Anatomy of Injustice, garnered an unusual amount of attention from the Russian media. Our press conference at the Independent Press Center was packed with journalists, both domestic and…
September 18, 2001, in Eritrea: A memory that never fades
It feels like it happened just yesterday. It was 7 a.m. on an average day in September in Asmara, Eritrea. My brain was still reshuffling the information I had gathered about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center a week earlier. I was writing an article on it for the next issue of Setit,…
The pure goodness of Manik Chandra Saha
An excerpt from Marked for Death: Dying for the Story in the World’s Most Dangerous Places, by Terry Gould: At first glance there is nothing particularly threatening about Khulna. Like most regional capitals in Bangladesh, it is hot and crowded, but its remote location in the waterlogged southwest has preserved its rural nature. Around Khan…
Journalists under threat: The psychology of sacrifice
Over the summer, as a book I’d written about the lives of murdered journalists went to press, a crusading human rights reporter from the Russian republic of Chechnya was shot dead. I was not surprised by the details of her murder, just as the Chechen reporter was not surprised she’d become a target for execution:…
In Uganda, citizen journalists fill news gap during riots
Last week in Uganda, authorities reacted to violent anti-government demonstrations, at left, by yanking at least four radio stations off the air and banning political programming and some journalists from the airwaves. I have been covering the Ugandan blogosphere for Global Voices for more than two years. News of the violence first reached me on…