New York, November 20, 2007— The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by recent allegations that an Egyptian blogger, jailed earlier this year for his online criticisms, was violently assaulted by inmates and prison guards this month. On November 12, the Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and the Hisham Mubarak Center for Law…
New York, November 20, 2007—The U.S. military has said it plans to prosecute an award-winning Associated Press photographer it has held for more than 19 months without charge for alleged links to Iraqi insurgents, but has not revealed evidence of the journalist’s alleged criminal wrongdoing. The U.S. military informed the AP on Sunday that it…
New York, November 20, 2007 — The Committee to Protect Journalists is angered by the arrest of more than 180 journalists today who were protesting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s government’s crackdown on media following his declaration of a state of emergency on November 3. Mazhar Abbas, the secretary general of the Pakistan Federal Union of…
New York, November 19, 2007– The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes an Australian coroner’s Friday ruling that five journalists were deliberately killed in 1975 by Indonesian armed forces seeking to prevent them from reporting on Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor. The killings may qualify as war crimes under the Geneva Conventions and Australian law, according…
New York, November 16, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly alarmed that news channels on the Pakistani networks GEO TV and ARY Digital were ordered by authorities to halt transmission today from the United Arab Emirates after refusing to sign a Pakistani government-mandated “code of conduct.” GEO TV was ordered by the UAE Information…
New York, November 15, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned for the safety of two journalists with the Tamil-language daily Malaysia Nanban. One was beaten and is now in a coma, and another received death threats after reporting on local Malaysian Tamil schools facing closure, according to Gayathry Venkiteswaran of the country’s Centre for…
New York, November 13, 2007—Somalia’s U.S. and Ethiopian-backed government has forced three prominent private radio stations off the air since Monday over their coverage of the bloody conflict centered in Mogadishu, according to news reports and local journalists. In a press conference today, Mogadishu Mayor Mohamed “Dheere” Omar Habeeb accused the private stations Radio Banadir…
New York, November 13, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the effective closure last week of the local edition of the Moscow-based independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta in the southern city of Samara and the criminal indictment of the edition’s editor for alleged use of counterfeit software. On Thursday, Samara police raided the local bureau and…
New York, November 12, 2007—The Chinese government should abandon its crackdown on so-called “fake” foreign journalists in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ expressed alarm that the government’s plan, which includes amassing records of thousands of foreign journalists seeking Olympics accreditation, is a pretext to block critical…
New York, November 12, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly concerned by pressure being exerted by the Pakistani government on broadcasters to sign a 14-page government-mandated “code of conduct.” Station owners say they have been told that if they do not sign the agreement, they will not be allowed to return to the air.…