Letters

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists strongly condemns the October 11 arrest and imprisonment on criminal defamation charges of Mam Sonando, a prominent radio journalist and founder of Sambok Khmum Radio FM 105, one of Cambodia’s few independent news outlets.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the recent assault on a Yemeni journalist, the latest in a disturbing series of attacks on the press documented over the past five months.

Your Excellency: As international leaders prepare to gather in Tunis for a summit on the Internet, the Committee to Protect Journalists strongly protests the imprisonment of journalists Hamadi Jebali and Mohamed Abbou, who have been jailed solely for expressing their views.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is writing to protest your government’s targeting of the private press following clashes last week between protesters and security forces, in which at least 40 people were killed, according to international news reports.

Lt. Gen. Halutz: The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the beating and brief detention of a cameraman filming a protest in the West Bank today. Nabil al-Mazzawi, 26, on assignment for the Qatar-based al-Jazeera news channel, was covering a demonstration against Israel’s construction of the separation barrier in the village of Beilin, near Ramallah, when he was attacked by several soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, the journalist told CPJ. He said the soldiers punched, kicked, and threw him to the ground. Al-Mazzawi said he was detained for six hours.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the ongoing harassment of prominent writer and medical doctor Nguyen Dan Que. Although he was released from prison in February, Que continues to face harsh restrictions on his movements and communication with others. He is barred from sending material online and seeking employment.

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by a campaign of harassment and intimidation against Stanislav Dmitriyevsky in retaliation for his newspaper’s reporting on the war in Chechnya. The persecution of Dmitriyevsky is part of a broader government campaign to obstruct the work of independent media reporting on Chechnya.

Dear General Casey, The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by recent incidents in which journalists have come under fire from U.S. and Iraqi forces at checkpoints near the International Zone in Baghdad.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists urgently calls on the United Nations Security Council to expand its current probe into the February 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri to include alarming, unsolved attacks against Lebanese journalists in recent months.

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: The Committee to Protect Journalists wishes to express its grave concern about the continuing detention of Iraqi journalists by the U.S. military in Iraq. U.S. forces have routinely detained Iraqi reporters or photojournalists since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. In several cases, individual journalists have been held for weeks or months without charge or due process.