Dear Mr. President: As Tunisia’s October presidential and parliamentary elections draw closer, the Committee to Protect Journalists is writing to you for the second time in four months to protest reprisals against critical journalists and their families. It is inconceivable that free and fair elections can take place in an environment in which independent media are harassed and silenced. We urge you to honor your oft-stated commitment to promote free expression, and we ask that you instruct your government to allow our colleagues to perform their work unhindered.
Your Excellency: We are writing to express our grave concern at the detention of our esteemed fellow journalist Maziar Bahari and to request his immediate release. Mr. Bahari has been detained since June 21. No charges have been brought against him, and he has not been granted access to a lawyer. As one of the most impartial and committed journalists in his field, he has reported regularly over the past decade from the Middle East, principally from Iran and Iraq, and provided consistently balanced and insightful reports. As an award-winning documentary filmmaker, he has earned global respect for his work.
Dear President Biya: We are very concerned about an ongoing pattern of abuses against press freedom in Cameroon. In particular, we are alarmed by recent death threats against an editor, the recent prosecution of two others by a military tribunal, and the lengthy imprisonments of another two on libel charges. We call on you to use your influence to end practices that are undermining the free flow of information.
Dear Mr. President: We are writing to express our alarm at your administration’s increasing restrictions on the Nigerien private press. We are concerned by the ongoing censorship of stories about the public opposition to your plans for a constitutional amendment that would scrap presidential term limits.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalist urges you to end an unprecedented level of intimidation and detention of Gambian journalists by national security forces. Today marks the third anniversary of the disappearance of journalist “Chief” Ebrima Manneh–his whereabouts, health, and legal status are unknown. Manneh, a former reporter for the Daily Observer, was taken into government custody by security agents in July 2006.
Dear President Nazarbayev: As an independent, nonpartisan organization defending press freedom worldwide, the Committee to Protect Journalists calls on you to veto a severely restrictive draft Internet law, which will further curb press freedom conditions in Kazakhstan and is inconsistent with your country’s democratic aspirations.
Dear President Obama: In advance of your July 6-8 summit in Moscow with President Dmitry Medvedev, we’d like to draw your attention to the pressing issue of impunity in violent crimes against journalists in Russia. We ask you to place this issue on the agenda for your talks. Seventeen journalists have been murdered for their work or have died under suspicious circumstances since 2000. In only one case have the killers been convicted. In every case, the masterminds remain unpunished.
Mr. President: We are alarmed by the government’s decision to indefinitely ban FM broadcasts of Radio France Internationale (RFI) in the eastern cities of Bunia and Bukavu. We call on you to use your influence to reverse these rulings, which we believe deprive residents of eastern Congo of access to diverse sources of information about the conflict in their region.
Dear Prime Minister Thaci: As an independent, nonpartisan organization defending press freedom worldwide, the Committee to Protect Journalists urges you to publicly condemn and thoroughly investigate a recent wave of threats against Jeta Xharra, head of the Kosovo office of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), and her colleagues.
Dear Sirs: The Committee to Protect Journalists urges you, as the president of the European Council and President of the European Commission, to take concrete steps to ensure that Cuba complies with the 2008 EU human rights conditions by immediately releasing the 22 journalists currently jailed and by granting freedom of expression and information to all Cubans.