New York, May 29, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by a recent series of sniper attacks in which unknown gunmen have targeted journalists in Aceh, a conflict-riven province on the northwestern tip of the Indonesian archipelago. We are also gravely concerned by mounting evidence of a systematic effort by Indonesian security forces…
New York, May 28, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns today’s sentencing of Internet journalists Xu Wei, Jin Haike, Yang Zili, and Zhang Honghai. This morning, the Beijing Intermediate Court sentenced Xu Wei and Jin Haike to ten years in prison on subversion charges, according to the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights in…
New York, May 28, 2003—The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court yesterday overturned the June 2002 acquittal of six men accused of organizing the 1994 murder of Dmitry Kholodov, a popular journalist for the Moscow newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets. The Supreme Court ruled that the Moscow Circuit Military Court had “failed to take all available evidence…
New York, May 27, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released an investigative report today about the April 8 shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad by U.S. forces, which killed two journalists and wounded three others. CPJ’s investigation, titled “Permission to Fire,” provides new details suggesting that the attack on the journalists, while not…
New York, May 27, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes the recent release of Ibrahim Hemaidi, the Damascus bureau chief of the pan-Arab, London-based daily Al-Hayat. Hemaidi, who was released on Sunday, May 25, had been detained since December 23, 2002, when he was arrested for writing an article discussing the Syrian government’s alleged…
New York, May 23, 2003—With 28 journalists behind bars in Cuba serving lengthy prison sentences for alleged counterrevolutionary crimes, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) launched a new press freedom information resource on its Web site today titled “Crackdown on the Independent Press in Cuba”.
New York, May 22, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned by the Tuesday, May 20, conviction of two journalists from the opposition weekly newspaper Mukhalifet on charges of criminally libeling the brother of President Heydar Aliyev. On May 20, the Yasamal District Court in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, found Mukhalifet editor-in-chief Rovshan Kabirli and…
New York, May 22, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the sentencing of South Korean free-lance photojournalist Jae Hyun Seok to two years in prison. Today, a court in Yantai, Shandong Province, sentenced Seok, who works regularly for The New York Times and South Korea’s Geo magazine, to a two-year prison term on charges…
New York, May 22, 2003—In a recent interview, Eritrean president Isaias Afewerki justified his government’s continuing crackdown on the independent media there by saying that the media were spreading disinformation. In September 2001, authorities closed all private media outlets in the country and arrested independent journalists and political reform activists. Eighteen independent journalists remain in…
New York, May 22, 2003—Two Palestinian journalists were recently brutally assaulted by Israeli soldiers after leaving a party in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. In the early morning hours of Tuesday, May 20, Shaaban Qandil, a cameraman with the Arabic News Network, and Joseph Handal, a cameraman with France 2, had just left Handal’s…