New York, December 3, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the detention of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of the tabloid weekly Blitz, who was arrested by security personnel at Zia International Airport in the capital, Dhaka. According to local news reports, Choudhury was on his way to Israel on November 29 to participate…
New York, December 3, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns yesterday’s killing of journalist Nelson Nadura, a commentator for Radio DYME in the Philippine’s central Masbate City. CPJ is investigating the circumstances behind his death. At about 8:30 a.m. on December 2, two unidentified gunmen shot Nadura on his motorcycle when he left the…
New York, December 2, 2003—Last week, a district court in the Belarus’ capital, Minsk, declared journalist Dmitry Zavadsky officially dead. Zavadsky, a 29-year-old cameraman for the Russian public television network ORT, disappeared in July 2000. According to local press reports, the cameraman’s widow, Svetlana Zavadskaya, initiated the judicial process in October 2003. Zavadsky’s body was…
New York, December 1, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes the release of Internet writer Liu Di but is gravely concerned that another Internet essayist, Du Daobin, has been charged with “subversion” and remains in jail. On November 28, Internet writer Liu Di, 23, was released from prison on bail. Liu, a psychology student…
New York, November 25, 2003—The government of Zanzibar, a semiautonomous island off the coast of Tanzania, has ordered the indefinite suspension of the independent weekly Dira, according to local journalists and international press reports. Dira, the island’s most popular newspaper, has been highly critical of the government. Editor Ali Nabwa told CPJ that Dira received…
November 24, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns today’s closure of the Iraq offices of the Dubai-based satellite news channel Al-Arabiyya. The U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council announced today that the station’s Baghdad-based news operations were banned from working in Iraq for an indefinite period, according to press reports. The move came after the station…
New York, November 24, 2003—Heavily armed police this morning confiscated all equipment belonging to the independent For Di People newspaper, in connection with a hefty damages award in a civil libel case. Editor Paul Kamara, who is also facing seditious libel charges in another case, was appearing in court at the time of the raid.…
New York, November 21, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned about the two-day detention of six journalists from the independent Rwandan newspaper Umuseso and the confiscation of the latest edition of the weekly. Editor Robert Sebufirira said he was arrested at about 9:30 a.m. on November 19 near the Rwanda-Uganda border as he…
New York, November 20, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today presented the recipients of the 2003 International Press Freedom Awards at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The recipients include: Abdul Samay Hamed, an independent writer, publisher, political cartoonist, and poet from Afghanistan; Aboubakr Jamai, who publishes two of…
New York, November 19, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes the release yesterday of Tunisian Internet journalist Zouhair Yahyaoui, who had been imprisoned since his June 4, 2002, arrest. Yahyaoui, editor of the online publication TUNEZINE.com, was sentenced to 28 months in prison on June 20, 2002, after a Tunis court convicted him of…