New York, July 14, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the arrest of Eritrean journalist Aklilu Solomon, Asmara-based stringer for the U.S. governmentfunded Voice of America (VOA) news service. Eritrean security officers arrested Solomon at his home on Tuesday, July 8, and took him to an undisclosed location. Ten days earlier, authorities had stripped…
New York, September 17, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned by the recent murder of Japanese freelance journalist Satoru Someya and is conducting an investigation to determine if he was killed for his work. On September 12, police found Someya’s body near a pier in Tokyo Bay. The exact time of his…
New York, September 16, 2003—Three years after the disappearance of Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is dismayed by the lack of progress in the government’s inquiry into this case. “President Leonid Kuchma’s government continues to obstruct the official inquiry,” said CPJ executive director Ann Cooper. “Journalists in Ukraine will not…
New York, September 16, 2003—This morning, detectives, security agents, armed paramilitary members, and riot police raided the offices of the Daily News, Zimbabwe’s only independent daily, according to The Associated Press (AP). Officials also seized computers and other equipment belonging to the newspaper. The raid came after the newspaper was closed on September 12. On…
New York, September 15, 2003— The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the recent wave of attacks on journalists by government security forces and by Maoist rebel forces in Nepal. Since rebels broke a cease-fire agreement on August 27, reports of journalists being kidnapped, arrested, threatened, and even murdered have risen dramatically. According to local…
September 15, 2003, New York—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the recent raid on the Ramallah offices of the Dubai-based Arabic satellite news channel Al-Arabiyya. Al-Arabiyya producer Qassem Al-Khateeb told CPJ that on the evening of Saturday, September 13, five masked and armed men entered the building where Al-Arabiyya is housed and asked whether…
New York, September 12, 2003—Zimbabwean authorities have shuttered the offices of the Harare-based Daily News, the country’s only independent daily. A Daily News staffer who answered the phone at the newspaper’s offices this evening said that “our operations are being ceased.” According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), a Daily News reporter said today that “about 20…
New York, September 11, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is outraged by a police attack earlier this week on a group of independent and opposition journalists outside the police headquarters in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. The attack occurred after 4 p.m. on Monday, September 8, in front of the headquarters while the journalists, were covering…
New York, September 11, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about the overnight detention of two Al-Jazeera journalists by U.S. forces in Iraq. U.S. troops detained correspondent Atwar Bahgat and her cameraman, Yasser Bahgat (no relation), last night in the Ghazaliya section of the capital, Baghdad. Atwar Bahgat told CPJ that she…
New York, September 11, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has learned that Ruslan Sharipov, a jailed Uzbek journalist and human rights activist, issued a statement from prison on September 5 reporting that he pled guilty to one charge in his August trial because authorities had forced him to do so by torturing him. In…