Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns in the strongest terms today’s indictment of Andrew Finkel, a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul who reports for Time magazine and the Times of London and appears on CNN. In a hearing today, Finkel, a British national, was charged with “insulting state institutions” under Article 159 of the Turkish Penal Code. The charge comes in response to a February 1998 article Finkel wrote for the daily Sabah titled “Shurnak 1998,” which discussed Turkey’s ongoing military operations against the Kurds in the southeast. An expert panel’s report, submitted to the court, concluded that Finkel did not insult the military. Another hearing has been scheduled for November 16, pending the report of a second panel of experts on the validity of the charges. If convicted, Finkel faces up to six years in prison.
Your Highness, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a non-governmental organization of journalists devoted to upholding press freedom worldwide, is writing to protest in the strongest terms the conviction and imprisonment of Dr. Ahmad Baghdadi, head of the political science department at Kuwait University and a regular contributor to the daily newspaper Al-Siyassa.
Right after the police raided my house, on May 24, 1999, they seemed to vanish from the neighborhood. You didn’t see them in Street 7134, and they stopped hanging out in the local café. But this proved to be a short respite—the calm before the storm. In mid-June, just as I was sighing with relief…
Click here to read Nadire Mater’s personal statement Last week, Nadire Mater, a reporter with Inter Press Service (IPS), learned that she had been formally charged with “insulting” the Turkish military-a crime under Article 159 of the Turkish Penal Code. If convicted, she faces between one and six years in prison. The charge stems from…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a nonpartisan organization of journalists dedicated to defending press freedom worldwide, is writing to protest the conviction handed down yesterday against Latin Safari, director of the banned daily newspaper Neshat.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a nonpartisan organization of journalists dedicated to defending press freedom worldwide, is writing to protest the conviction handed down yesterday against Latin Safari, director of the banned daily newspaper Neshat.
By Nadire Mater Istanbul, September 21, 1999—A local prosecutor in Beyoglu, Istanbul has finally indicted me under Article 159 of the penal code ( “insulting and belittling the military”) for having published the statements of former army soldiers who I interviewed for my book Mehmedin Kitabi(“Mehmed’s Book—Soldiers Who Have Fought in the Southeast Speak Out”). The…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to express its deep concern about continuing state restrictions on the press in Yemen. We are particularly dismayed by the authorities’ ongoing harassment of the thrice-weekly newspaper Al-Ayyamand the closure of the opposition weekly Al-Shoura.We call on Your Excellency to assume a leadership role to help reverse state restrictions on the press and to guarantee the right of journalists to practice their profession freely.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to express its deep concern about the arrest of Maher al-Dessouki, a television journalist with the independent Al-Quds Educational TV station. On the morning of September 15, Palestinian Preventive Security Services (PSS) agents arrested al-Dessouki in the West Bank city of Ramallah. According to the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment (LAW), he was accused by Palestinian authorities of “possessing material inciting against the PNA.”