Dear Mr. Speaker: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about the proposed amendment to the 1995 Ugandan Press and Journalist Act, which is expected to be presented before parliament soon. We believe the bill would severely hamper the operations of newspapers and damage the country’s press freedom credentials.
Dear President Arroyo and Chief Justice Puno: We are greatly concerned by the apparent lack of an effective government response to threats made against Marites Danguilan Vitug, one of the Philippines’ senior and most eminent journalists. Vitug said she believes your intervention will serve as a deterrent to whoever is trying to intimidate her, and, hopefully, to those who try to intimidate other journalists in the future.
Dear President Rodríguez Zapatero: On the seventh anniversary of the Cuban government’s massive crackdown on dissidents and the independent press, the Committee to Protect Journalists calls on you as leader of the European Union to take the forefront in defending human rights by urging President Raúl Castro to immediately release 22 journalists now jailed in Cuba.
Your Majesty: The Committee to Protect Journalists is disappointed by the government’s continued use of the courts to suppress freedom of expression, and it urges you to use your constitutional prerogatives to end the unjust imprisonment of our colleague Driss Chahtan. We also ask you to instruct authorities to end the practice of withholding accreditation from journalists working for critical foreign news outlets.
Dear President Biya: We are writing to express our alarm at the harassment and abuse of at least a dozen journalists in Cameroon. These reporters each raised questions about your administration’s management of public finances, the progress of an anti-corruption drive dubbed Operation Sparrowhawk, and local government affairs. We call on you to hold members of the administration accountable for using security forces and criminal laws to settle scores with the media. We further urge you to initiate reforms that would refer matters of defamation to civil courts.
Dear Minister Barak: The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a recent spate of press freedom violations in the West Bank, including detentions, censorship, harassment, and physical attacks by Israeli soldiers. We ask that you ensure that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) examine the cases outlined below and discipline any individuals who are found to have committed violations.
Dear Prime Minister Brown: We last wrote to you on November 5 to urge you to authorize the Ministry of Defence to carry out an investigation into the September 9, 2009, military operation that rescued British-Irish journalist and New York Times correspondent Stephen Farrell and unfortunately led to the death of his Afghan colleague, Sultan Munadi. In our November 5 letter, we offered our condolences on the loss of British Parachute Regiment Cpl. John Harrison, but also pointed out that many questions about the operation remain unanswered. Among them is whether Munadi’s rescue was a central objective, what circumstances existed when he was killed, and why his remains were left behind after British forces withdrew.