Letters

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by the Venezuelan Supreme Court’s recent decision establishing criteria for “timely, truthful, and impartial information” and specifying how this right may be exercised.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an independent organization dedicated to the defense of press freedom around the world, strongly protests the recent conviction of Oleg Liachko, editor of the independent Kyiv weekly Svoboda, on defamation charges.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is profoundly concerned about recent threats against Roosevelt Benjamin, director of information of the radio station Signal FM, based in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Pétion-Ville. We urge Your Excellency to guarantee the safety of our colleague.

Dear President Ling: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) notes with concern the Malaysia Chinese Association (MCA)’s recent acquisition of the Chinese-language dailies Nanyang Siang Pau and China Press.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is very concerned about the continued detention of three leading Nepalese journalists. We call for their immediate and unconditional release.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch are writing jointly to protest the prosecution of Vineet Narain, founding editor of the New Delhi-based investigative journal Kalchakra. Narain faces contempt of court charges in Jammu and Kashmir State, where he says his life would be in serious danger. We urge you to order an immediate inquiry into possible political motivations behind Narain’s prosecution, and to provide him with appropriate protection if he is required to appear in court in Jammu.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by recent cases in which Vladivostok authorities have harassed media outlets and journalists for political reasons. Specifically, we wish to draw your attention to the confiscation of the newspaper Dalyokaya Okrayina by local police, and to an NTV news broadcast that showed Vladivostok mayor Yury Kopylov insulting NTV journalists and ordering his bodyguard to assault them.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes your decision to lift censorship restrictions on the Sri Lankan media. We hope that your administration will now work to lift other obstacles that prevent reporting on the country’s long-running civil war.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned for the safety of Paraguayan journalist Séver del Puerto and his family, who have suffered an onslaught of death threats and harassment in recent weeks. We call on Your Excellency to ensure that these threats are fully investigated, and the perpetrators punished.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is disturbed by your recent order banning government agencies from spending public funds to purchase the Windhoek independent daily The Namibian. This decision follows a government advertising ban imposed on the newspaper in December.