Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wishes to congratulate you on your appointment as the new president of Indonesia. As an organization of journalists dedicated to the defense of press freedom around the world, we hope that you will use your authority to preserve and strengthen recent gains in press freedom.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned that the prosecution on drug charges of Rehmat Shah Afridi, owner and chief editor of the English-language newspaper The Frontier Post and the Urdu daily Maidan, may be politically motivated. On June 27, a special anti-narcotics court in Lahore convicted Afridi on drug smuggling charges and sentenced him to death.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about the latest deterioration in Angolan press freedom. While Angolan journalists have long faced official hostility and harassment, CPJ has documented a deplorable surge in government interference with the independent press in recent weeks.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to condemn the unjust prosecution of José Orlando González Bridón, a Cuban journalist and labor activist who was recently sentenced to two years in jail for distributing “false information.”
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about government harassment of independent and opposition media in Yemen. In recent weeks, we have documented a disturbing pattern of censorship and intimidation of journalists in response to their professional work.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is dismayed by the recent imprisonment of essayist Liu Weifang on subversion charges. We call for his immediate and unconditional release. The government’s case against Liu is based on essays that he had posted on the Internet. In mid-June, the Ninth Agricultural Brigade district’s Intermediate People’s Court in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region sentenced him to serve three years in prison, according to a June 15 report in the Xinjiang Daily.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about your government’s continued persecution of independent journalists and news outlets. We first protested your administration’s heavy-handed treatment of our colleagues in an April 10 letter. Since then, conditions for Congolese journalists have only worsened.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about the security of Dharmeratnam Sivaram, veteran journalist and editor of the TamilNet Web site. Over the past two weeks, state media have featured articles accusing Sivaram of being a spy for the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)–a charge that seriously endangers him and his family.