Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gratified that Mexican journalists have generally been able to cover the current election campaign without government interference. However, we would like to express our concern about a number of recent incidents.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly protests the house arrest of writer Dr. Nguyen Xuan Tu, better known by his pen name Dr. Ha Sy Phu. We call on the Vietnamese government to restore Dr. Ha’s liberty and abandon legal actions currently pending against him.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely disturbed by your regime’s plans to tighten state control over the press in Côte d’Ivoire. According to CPJ’s sources in Abidjan, Information Minister Captain Henri Cesar Sama announced on June 23 that the ruling National Public Salvation Committee (CNSP) would soon release a list of measures designed to block the publication of any information “likely to negatively affect the credibility of journalists, national security and social peace.”
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by several recent incidents in which individuals closely linked to your political party attacked individual journalists and a local publishing house in Sarajevo.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is outraged by the continued persecution of Freddy Loseke Lisumbu la Yayenga, editor of the Kinshasa-based weekly La Libre Afrique. We condemn Loseke’s recent conviction for “insulting the army,” an absurd charge that is an affront to the most basic standards of press freedom.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is greatly disturbed by the fact that an independent journalist in your country has been jailed for insulting a judge. On June 19, a Jalal-Abad city court sentenced Moldosali Ibraimov, a reporter with the independent regional weekly Akyikat, to two years imprisonment for criminal defamation. He was also fined 100,000 soms (US$1,230); a similar fine was imposed on Akyikat, according to local news reports and CPJ sources in Bishkek. He is currently in jail pending an appeal.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned by the climate of intimidation in which journalists covering the upcoming parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe are being forced to work. In recent weeks, local and foreign correspondents have been subjected to harassment and even violence by politicians and other individuals associated with your government and the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the brutal beating of an independent Armenian journalist. We call on you to ensure that this attack is investigated, and that its perpetrators are brought to justice.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to express its deep concern about the recent death of Abed Takkoush, a driver for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Takkoush was killed by Israeli shellfire in southern Lebanon on May 23 during Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory.