New York, August 21, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns this week’s murder of journalist Noel Villarante in Santa Cruz, a town in the Philippine’s central Laguna Province. At about 6:30 p.m. on August 19, an unidentified gunman shot Villarante as he was standing in front of his house, according to reports in Philippine…
New York, August 21, 2003—Earlier this month, a group of young men brutally assaulted Flata Kavinga, a reporter for Zimbabwe’s English-language weekly The Midlands Observer. According to sources familiar with the incident, on August 8, six men—at least two of whom were members of Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF—approached the reporter outside a nightclub in Kwekwe, a…
New York, August 20, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly condemns a district court’s conviction of independent journalist German Galkin on criminal defamation charges in the southern city of Chelyabinsk in Russia’s Ural mountains. According to local and international press reports, on August 15, following a trial that was closed to the public, the…
New York, August 17, 2003—Mazen Dana, a veteran television cameraman for Reuters, was killed in Baghdad on Sunday while filming outside the city’s Abu Ghraib prison. According to wire service reports, Dana was shot by U.S.soldiers riding on a tank in the Iraqi capital. The 43-year-old Palestinian was honored by CPJ two years ago for…
Version française Port-au-Prince, August 15, 2003—Top officials of the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide have agreed to report to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on the status of judicial investigations into press freedom abuses documented by CPJ. The agreement came during a five-day visit to Haiti by members of a CPJ delegation, who met…
Porto Príncipe, 15 de agosto de 2003 – Oficiais do alto escalão do governo do Presidente Jean-Bertrand Aristide concordaram em informar ao Comitê de Proteção aos Jornalistas (CPJ) sobre o andamento das investigações judiciais sobre abusos cometidos contra a liberdade de imprensa documentados pelo CPJ. A decisão foi obtida em um visita de cinco dias…
New York, August 13, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is disturbed that U.S. forces forcibly detained Hassan Fattah, editor of the English-language daily Iraq Today, on Monday, August 11, after preventing him from attending a press conference. In an e-mail to CPJ, Fattah described the incident, which occurred at Baghdad’s conference center when he…
New York, August 13, 2003—Armed men claiming to be supporters of Harold Keke, a rebel leader in the Solomon Islands, attacked the Bougainville offices of the daily English-language Papua New Guinea Post-Courier and threatened Gorethy Kenneth, the newspaper’s correspondent in Bougainville, on Friday, August 8. Bougainville is an island in Papua New Guinea, across the…
New York, August 13, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is troubled by a news release summarizing the results of a U.S. Central Command (Centcom) investigation into the April 8 shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. The release, which was published yesterday on Centcom’s Web site, failed to answer vital questions about the incident,…
New York, August 12, 2003—The Moscow City Court upheld an earlier July 24 district court ruling today denying a foreign passport to Russian journalist Grigory Pasko. Ivan Pavlov, Pasko’s attorney, told CPJ in a telephone interview today that Pasko plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Pasko was convicted…