Letters

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) calls on you to address the climate of lawlessness that has led to the slayings of more than a dozen independent journalists in Russia in four years, most recently the July 9 murder of Paul Klebnikov, the 41-year-old editor of the Russian edition of Forbes Magazine.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned that Thailand’s criminal defamation laws are being used to suppress critical voices. In June, a court ruled that telecommunications giant Shin Corporation could sue media reformer Supinya Klangnarong for criminal libel. On July 5, London Times’ Bangkok correspondent Andrew Drummond was convicted of criminal libel in a separate suit.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned by the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF’s) missile attack in the Gaza Strip on a building that houses several media outlets.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the ongoing imprisonment of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, the editor and publisher of the tabloid weekly Blitz, who was jailed on sedition charges. We call for his immediate and unconditional release.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the imprisonment of Nicaise Kibel-Bel-Oka, publisher and editor of the private weekly Les Coulisses in the northeastern town of Beni, on defamation charges.

Dear Mr. Elorduy Walther: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide, condemns the murder of Mexican journalist Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco, who was killed yesterday in the border city of Tijuana, in Baja California state.

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns yesterday’s deportation of Mikhail Podolyak, a Ukrainian journalist, by the Belarusian security service (KGB). Early yesterday morning, agents forced Podolyak out of his home in the capital of Minsk and put him on a train to Odessa, Ukraine, according to local and international reports.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about recent closures of independent media outlets in Ukraine. We believe that these closures are part of a sweeping campaign to eliminate voices that are critical of the government and to block public access to independent sources of information in the run-up to presidential elections scheduled for October.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to protest Wednesday’s decision in the Criminal Court in Cairo to sentence Ahmed Ezzedine, a journalist with the independent weekly Al-Osbou newspaper, to two years in prison.

Dear Mr. Salazar Mendiguchía: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide, condemns Chiapas’ recent enactment of penal code reforms that impose severe criminal penalties for defamation.