Letters

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about the health of imprisoned journalists Hisham Bashraheel and Muhammad al-Maqaleh and calls for their immediate release.

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.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply disturbed by your government’s intensified pressure on independent journalists in Uzbekistan.

Mr. Prime Minister: We are writing to draw your attention to conditions that undermine press freedom as guaranteed in Article 29 of the Ethiopian Constitution. We would welcome your leadership in furthering reform by working for the repeal of draconian provisions in recent antiterrorism and media legislation.

Dear Mr. President, The Committee to Protect Journalists is writing to protest the continued detention and relentless campaign of persecution against Hanevy Ould Dehah, editor of the online news site Taqadoumy, who has been imprisoned since June.

President Aliyev: The Committee to Protect Journalists urges you to open a new page in your government’s policies toward the independent and opposition press, one that would demonstrate tolerance for the critical role of media in a democracy. No other action would contribute to this goal as much as the immediate release of Eynulla Fatullayev, editor of the now-closed independent Russian-language weekly Realny Azerbaijan and the Azeri-language daily Gündalik Azarbaycan, who has been imprisoned since April 2007 on charges that range from defamation to terrorism.