Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) appeals to you to release our colleague Shodi Mardiev on humanitarian grounds. We wrote to you on January 12, 2000, with a similar request. Since that time, Mardiev’s health has deteriorated even further.
Dear Mr. Salahuddin: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns yesterday’s bomb attack in Srinagar, which killed one journalist and seriously injured at least six others. Pradeep Bhatia, a photographer for the Indian newspaper The Hindustan Times, was one of twelve people killed in the attack, police told reporters today.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is greatly alarmed that a minister in your government has threatened journalists reporting in the flood-ravaged district of Satkhira, where two journalists were attacked recently for their coverage of the misuse of disaster relief funds.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by your government’s efforts to restrict the exchange of news and information over the Internet. A notice published in the October 26 edition of the Vientiane Times, a government newspaper, warned people “not to use the Internet in the wrong way” and included a number of rules governing online content. The guidelines had been circulated a few days earlier by the Khao Sane Pathet Lao (KPL) news agency, which stated that those who disregard the rules “will be warned, educated, fined, expelled, or prosecuted according to the law,” as reported by The Associated Press.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by the recent harassment of three Radio Fiji journalists who had aired a controversial news item alleging divisions within the Fijian military concerning the composition of the interim government.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely disturbed by the death of Italian radio journalist Antonio Russo, whose body was found on October 16 outside the capital, Tbilisi. Because of the highly suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, Russo’s colleagues in Tbilisi fear the journalist may have been murdered in reprisal for his coverage of the conflict in neighboring Chechnya, according to local media reports.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the murder yesterday of veteran journalist Mylvaganam Nimalarajan, a Jaffna-based journalist who reported for various news organizations including the BBC’s Tamil and Sinhala-language services, the Tamil-language daily Virakesari, and the Sinhala-language weekly Ravaya.