Alerts

New York, May 27, 2005—The Pakistani government has banned state-sponsored advertising in two newspapers owned by a leading conservative media company, the Urdu-language daily Nawa-i-Waqt and the English-language daily The Nation. According to reports in The Nation, last week’s ban was implemented in direct retaliation for an April ad that both dailies ran from the…

New York, May 27, 2005—The Kremlin has waged a brutally effective information war in Chechnya using repressive policies, restrictive rules, subtle censorship, and outright attacks on journalists, Alex Lupis reports in the new edition of Dangerous Assignments. The spring/summer edition of the magazine is now available from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Also in the…

New York, May 26, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the assault of several foreign and local journalists by government supporters as police looked on during demonstrations in Cairo yesterday. Journalists told CPJ that the attacks took place as they were covering demonstrations in downtown Cairo organized by Kifaya (Enough), an opposition group that was…

New York, May 26, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes a new ruling by the Honduran Supreme Court of Justice that strikes down the desacato, or contempt, provision in the country’s Penal Code. The Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber ruled on May 19 that Article 345 of the Penal Code was unconstitutional because it provided “special…

New York, May 26, 2005—Veteran journalist Abdallah Nurdin Ahmad was wounded Tuesday night in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, when an unidentified gunman fired three times at close range, according to CPJ sources. Nurdin, a senior producer at the private radio station HornAfrik, underwent surgery at Medina Hospital and was recovering today. Ali Iman Sharmake, HornAfrik’s…

New York, May 25, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Sunday’s assault on Dmitry Suryaninov, general director of the Media-Samara holding company, which owns several news outlets in the Samara region of southern Russia. At least two assailants battered Suryaninov with baseball bats near his home in Samara, the regional capital, according to local and…

New York, May 25, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the criminal charges brought today against two journalists from the private weekly newspaper Trumpet. Managing editor Sydney Pratt and reporter Dennis Jones were arrested yesterday and were being held at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in the capital, Freetown, where the paper is based. Both…

New York, May 24, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities in Bangladesh to drop sedition charges against Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, the editor and publisher of the now-defunct weekly tabloid Blitz. Choudhury will appear in court tomorrow to apply for an extension of his bail, which he received on April 30 after spending…

New York, May 24, 2005—Hundreds of journalists took to the streets of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, today in a silent protest of reported government moves to amend the media law to impose further restrictions on the press. The Kathmandu-based dailies Kantipur and Kathmandu Post, citing an unnamed source, reported late last week that officials had moved…