Communist Party elders urge end to China’s censorship
Twenty-three senior Communist Party members have published a letter calling for sweeping reforms of China’s media censorship policies. “Our core demand is that the system of censorship be dismantled in favor of a system of legal responsibility,” the letter said, according to an English translation by Hong Kong University’s China Media Project. Widely distributed by e-mail and posted…
A top Kazakhstan diplomat pledges press reforms
Kazakhstan is ready to bring its press laws in line with international standards, a top diplomat told a CPJ delegation in Vienna this week. Decriminalizing libel, placing caps on defamation awards, and enacting access-to-information legislation are on the government’s agenda, said Kazakhstan Ambassador Kairat Abdrakhmanov, who is chairman of the permanent council of the Organization…
Iran must disclose identities of detained Germans
New York, October 12, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Iranian authorities to immediately disclose the names of two Germans who were arrested on Sunday and described as journalists in several news reports. CPJ also asked Iranian officials to clarify the circumstances surrounding the arrests of the two individuals and to state what, if…
Cuba frees 17th journalist jailed in Black Spring
New York, October 12, 2010–Cuban journalist Alfredo Felipe Fuentes, left, was freed from prison on Friday and exiled to Spain as part of a July agreement between the Havana government and the Catholic Church. Seventeen journalists jailed in the 2003 Black Spring crackdown have now been freed and exiled as part of the agreement. “I feel…
As with Norgrove, a need to probe Munadi death
This morning, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that British aid worker Linda Norgrove, who died in a rescue attempt after she was taken hostage in Afghanistan, may have been killed by a U.S. grenade rather than by her Taliban captors, as originally reported.
Uzbekistan should drop charges against journalists
Dear President Karimov: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the politicized prosecution of two journalists: Abdumalik Boboyev, a stringer for the U.S. government-funded broadcaster Voice of America (VOA), and Vladimir Berezovsky, an editor for the news website Vesti.
Somaliland obstructs UK satellite station
New York, October 7, 2010–Authorities in Somaliland should immediately lift a suspension order imposed against the UK-based satellite broadcaster Universal TV, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The order bars the station’s correspondents from reporting in the breakaway republic in northern Somalia, Khadar Mahamed, Universal TV senior newscaster and producer, told CPJ.
China seeks to block news of Liu’s Nobel
New York, October 8, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Chinese government to end its pointless attempts to block the news by blacking out domestic and foreign media coverage of the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s announcement awarding jailed human rights activist Liu Xiaobo the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. According to foreign news agencies’ reports from…
The high price of writing about the Japanese mafia
“In life, we only encounter the injustices we were meant to correct.” -Igari Toshiro, ex-prosecutor, leading lawyer in the anti-organized crime movement in Japan (1949-2010) Igari Toshiro was my lawyer, my mentor, and my friend. In the sixteen years I’ve been covering organized crime in Japan, I’ve never met anyone more courageous or inspiring–or anyone…
Russian journalists detail FSB and ‘New Nobility’
How do you crack Russia’s vaunted security service? You go to low- and mid-level officials for information, say Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, authors of the new book, The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB. At a luncheon for CPJ supporters on Thursday, Soldatov…