Last weekend I participated in a conference in Venice, Italy, on climate change and the press. The meeting was hosted by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev under the auspices on the World Political Forum, an organization Gorbachev founded in 2003 to foster discussion on “crucial problems that affect humankind.”
The attempted poisoning of Russian human rights lawyer Karinna Moskalenko, who is representing the family of Anna Politkovskaya, is the focus of a story in The New York Times this morning. The article cites our alert on the incident and raises concerns about the poisoning, which sickened Moskalenko only days before pretrial hearings in the…
On September 27, the High Court in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, granted acting President Rupiah Banda an injunction restraining The Post newspaper from publishing libelous words against him. Zambia’s Sunday Times reported that the court had also given a penal notice to Editor-in-Chief Fred M’membe to comply with the order. M’membe refused and appealed to the…
The Associated Press has coverage today of the detention of two journalists working for the Jordan Times who had been detained by Syrian officials when they tried to enter the country from Lebanon. The Wall Street Journal is also running the AP story. Also today the Web site of the Philippine newspaper The Mindanao Examiner…
CPJ is concerned for the safety of two American journalists, Holli Chmela, 27, and Taylor Luck, 23, who are reported missing in Lebanon. The Chmela family issued the following statement tonight. We are hoping and praying for the safe return of our children, Taylor Luck and Holli Chmela. We wish to thank the State Department and FBI…
As we noted in a recent special report, Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali relies on spying and intimidation to keep his citizens in line. The United States has been a friend and supporter of Ben Ali and not at all consistent in calling attention to ongoing human rights abuses, particularly the harassment, intimidation,…
The Associated Press has coverage today of our letter to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez expressing concern at the growing violence Venezuela. The Spanish-language Web site of Univision is also running the AP story. The South Africa-based Web site Daily Dispatch Online has a story today about the troubled Zimbabwe media. Also making news today is the institution of a telephone hotline to help endangered journalists in Iraq. Reuters has…
I met Anna Politkovskaya in person only once, in 2005. She was in New York to collect yet another journalism award, and stopped by CPJ one October afternoon. I remember her crossing the lobby with an even, determined step. She had an urgency about her–that rare focus that comes only with absolute clarity about one’s…
The Web site of news channel France 24 is reporting that today, on the two-year anniversary of the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, more than 200 people gathered in Moscow for a vigil. The story cites our alert from yesterday that criticized Russia’s decision to try three men accused in the murder case in a military, rather than civilian, court. Web…
Agence France-Presse has coverage of the arrest and subsequent release of Ali Ilyas Abdullahi, a Somali radio journalist. Abdullahi was detained by police in the Somali capital Mogadishu over the weekend after reporting on a mortar attack at the home of a government official. Also making news today is an interview with recently released Yemeni…