New York, May 3, 2006—Two journalists from Botswana’s state broadcaster were arrested by Zimbabwean police on April 30, held for two days, and charged with violating Zimbabwe’s draconian Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), Botswana’s director of broadcasting services, Bapasi Mphusu, confirmed today. Botswana Television (BTV) reporter Beauty Mokoba and cameraman Koketso…
New York, May 3, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for an immediate and full investigation into the shooting death today of newspaper columnist Nicholas Cervantes, 65. According to media reports, he was shot three times in the chest by a group of four or five assailants outside of his house in suburban Manila. Cervantes,…
New York, May 3, 2006—Mario Spezi, an Italian journalist whose new book raises questions about a serial murder investigation, was released from a prison in the central city of Perugia on Saturday, according to local and international press reports. An appeals court that day ordered that Spezi be released immediately, but it did not issue…
New York, May 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the recent arrests and criminal prosecutions for defamation of three journalists with the independent Kurdish weekly Hawlati in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region. On Tuesday, a criminal court in the city of Sulaymaniyah sentenced Twana Osman, editor-in-chief of Hawlati, and Asos Hardi, the paper’s…
New York, May 2, 2006—The trial of journalist Yang Xiaoqing has been set for May 10 in the county court of Longhui, in south central China’s Hunan province, the same county where Yang’s reporting exposed alleged graft among local officials, his wife and lawyer told CPJ today. “It is ludicrous to think that Yang Xiaoqing…
New York, May 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns today’s attack on the Tamil-language daily Uthayan. Editor N. Vithayatharan confirmed to CPJ that five masked gunmen killed two employees and wounded at least two others, one seriously, when they sprayed the paper’s office with automatic weapons fire in Jaffna. CPJ calls on the government…
New York, May 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the detention of an opposition newspaper editor for criticizing the president of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. Viktor Shmakov, editor-in-chief of Provintsialniye Vesti (Provincial News), was arrested April 28 by Federal Security Service (FSB) agents in Ufa, the capital of the semi-autonomous republic,…
New York, October 5, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned that Sudanese security forces have held Abu Obeida Abdallah, a reporter for the pro-government daily Al-Ra’y Al-Aam, incommunicado and without charge since Friday. “No evidence has been disclosed to suggest Abu Obeida Abdallah has committed a crime,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said.…
New York, May 1, 2006—The publisher of Cameroon’s English-language tabloid The Chronicle was beaten unconscious by the bodyguard and the driver of an opposition leader, local journalists told the Committee to Protect Journalists today. Eric Motomu, who also edits the paper, told CPJ he was attacked on Friday at a rally in the opposition stronghold…
New York, May 1, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed at the arrest on Friday of Tchanguis Vatankah, founder of an independent radio station and president of the Chadian Union of Private Radios. Police took Vatankah from his home in the capital, N’Djamena, but did not show any arrest warrant, according to Evariste Toldé,…