Dear Mr. Ubaydulloyev: Joel Simon, Josh Friedman, and I appreciated the opportunity to meet with you on July 22 to discuss press freedom conditions in Tajikistan. We also appreciate your willingness to review a letter from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) outlining our specific concerns about the country’s criminal defamation laws and problems regarding journalists’ access to government information.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) believes that the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of journalist and human rights activist Ruslan Sharipov are part of a politically motivated campaign to suppress press freedom in Uzbekistan.
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is shocked by the death of Reuters television cameraman Mazen Dana, who was killed by machine gun fire from a U.S. tank near Baghdad yesterday. We demand a full, public investigation into this incident. According to several press accounts, Dana was struck in the chest while filming near Abu Ghraib Prison outside Baghdad, late in the afternoon on August 17. Dana had been reporting near the prison after a mortar attack had killed six Iraqis there the previous night. Eyewitnesses quoted by international media said that several journalists had been near the prison at the time of the incident and that a soldier in the tank fired on Dana as he filmed it approaching him from about 50 meters (55 yards).
Vossa Excelência: O Comitê para a Proteção dos Jornalistas (CPJ) está preocupado com a detenção de vários jornalistas dominicanos que criticaram a gestão presidencial. Tais detenções, que a nosso ver tiveram como objetivo intimidar e perseguir os jornalistas e obriga-los a autocensura, põem em perigo a reputação da República Dominicana como nação onde se respeita a liberdade de imprensa.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned about the detention of several Dominican journalists who criticized your government. We believe that these detentions were designed to intimidate and harass journalists into censoring themselves and, therefore, jeopardize the Dominican Republic’s reputation as a country that respects press freedom.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the recent attacks against Hasan Jahid Tusher, a correspondent for the English-language newspaper The Daily Star, and Jahangir Alam Akas, a reporter of the Bengali-language daily Sangbad. These are the latest in a series of assaults against journalists in Bangladesh, none of which your government has adequately investigated.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the recent murder of Bonifacio Gregorio, a reporter and columnist for the weekly Dyaryo Banat, in La Paz, Tarlac Province. On the evening of July 8, an unidentified gunman approached Gregorio while he was talking to a colleague on a cell phone in front of his house and shot him in the head three times at close range. According to news reports, the gunman was likely a professional killer who fled the scene on foot. Gregorio was rushed to La Paz District Hospital, before being transferred to Ramos General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is greatly alarmed by a series of recent threats and attacks against journalists in Bangladesh and urges your government to take immediate action to ensure that these crimes are prosecuted vigorously.