Letters

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the evident crackdown on Internet expression and print journalism in the weeks leading up to and following the final transfer of leadership to Your Excellency on September 19.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the imprisonment of Paul Kamara, editor and publisher of For Di People newspaper. Kamara was sentenced yesterday to two years in prison stemming from October 2003 articles that criticized Your Excellency.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed at the recent detention of Zhao Yan, a news assistant at the New York Times Beijing bureau and a former reporter for Beijing-based China Reform magazine.

Dear Mr. Secretary, The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely concerned about the U.S. military strike on Haifa Street in Baghdad on September 12, which killed at least 13 civilians and injured another 100 civilians.

Your Excellency: We are writing to express alarm over the deteriorating human rights situation and growing repression of freedom of expression in Eritrea. In particular, we are concerned about the ban that your government has imposed on all independent non-governmental press since September 2001, when an unknown number of critics of your government were detained. Those detained include more than a dozen journalists who have been incarcerated for over three years without being formally charged.

Dear Sir: The Committee to Protect Journalists is writing to request an immediate and thorough investigation into the murder of Venezuelan journalist Mauro Marcano, who was killed by unidentified attackers while he was leaving his home on September 1 in the city of Maturín, the capital of eastern Monagas State.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists protests the imprisonment of Abdel Karim al-Khaiwani, editor of the opposition weekly Al-Shoura, who began serving a one-year prison sentence on September 5.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the August 31 police attack on Guatemalan journalists covering the eviction of peasants from a ranch in the southern department of Retalhuleu. The police operation ended with several deaths and scores of injuries.

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply disturbed by an alarming government attack against the Lagos-based news magazine Insider Weekly, one that is fundamentally at odds with the most basic democratic principles. Members of the State Security Service (SSS) recently raided the newspaper, arrested employees, seized equipment, censored the news, and shut its…

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is extremely concerned about an escalating campaign of intimidation and harassment against independent and opposition journalists in Tajikistan. The actions are further eroding press conditions at the very moment your citizens most need a free press–for the run-up to parliamentary elections in early 2005.