UNITED STATES: New York, June 18, 2008—The publisher and editor of an Urdu-language newspaper in Houston, Pakistan Times USA, has received telephone death threats, and thousands of copies of the free weekly were removed in bulk from dozens of locations in southeastern Texas. The threats and theft of the papers came after the Pakistan Times…
New York, June 18, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly concerned by the continued detention of prominent Internet publisher and human rights activist Huang Qi. Police in Chengdu detained Huang on June 10 on charges of “illegally holding state secrets” according to local and international news reports, some of which quoted his lawyer, Mo…
RUSSIA: New York, June 18, 2008—Three men have been charged in connection with the October 2006 assassination of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the Investigative Committee at Russia’s Prosecutor-General’s Office announced today. With these charges, investigators have completed a preliminary investigation into the journalist’s immediate killers, a spokesman for the committee said. However, separate probes…
New York, June 17, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder of Mohieddin Abdul Hameed al-Naqib, a news presenter for the local affiliate of state-run television station Al-Iraqiya TV, who was gunned down by assailants in the Iraqi city of Mosul today. Al-Naqib, 49, was leaving his house outside Mosul on his way to…
New York, June 17, 2008–Police in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek raided the newsroom of independent newspaper De-Facto on June 14, taking all its financial records, confiscating computers, and sealing the newsroom, the independent regional news Web site Ferghana reported. The paper was shut down after it published a letter to Kyrgyzstan’s president and other…
New York, June 17, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces repeated efforts by authorities in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia to shut down the regional news Web site Ingushetiya—one of the few remaining independent news outlets covering the volatile North Caucasus—for alleged extremism. On June 6, Kuntsevo district court in Moscow ordered the closure…
VENEZUELA: New York, June 16, 2008—Javier García, news anchor for the Caracas-based television station Radio Caracas Television Internacional (RCTV), was found dead in his Caracas apartment on Sunday. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on local authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into García’s death.
AZERBAIJAN: New York, June 16, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged by the police beating of Emin Huseynov, head of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS), in Baku, Azerbaijan, on June 14. Huseynov was covering an event for the 80th birthday of slain Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara. Policed raided the event and…
New York, June 13, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the June 7 arrest of Salidzhon Abdurakhmanov, an independent Uzbek journalist for a number of international news outlets. Police arrested Abdurakhmanov in the city of Nukus for alleged drug possession, independent news Web site Uznews reported. If convicted, Abdurakhmanov faces up to five…
New York, June 13, 2008—Chinese police arrested Internet writer Zeng Hongling in Chengdu, the capital of the earthquake-hit province of Sichuan, on Monday for publishing personal accounts of the earthquake on overseas Chinese-language Web sites, according to news reports and a Chinese press freedom advocate. Three days later, a well-known Internet publisher and human rights…