Iran

New York, September 25, 2009—Mexico must put an end to the pattern of impunity in journalists’ murders by prosecuting all those responsible for Wednesday’s brutal killing of Norberto Miranda Madrid, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Miranda, a harsh critic of local crime, was shot to death in his office in Nuevo Casas Grandes…

New York, September 23, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists will honor courageous journalists from Somalia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Azerbaijan with its 2009 International Press Freedom Awards at a ceremony in November. Mustafa Haji Abdinur of Somalia, Naziha Réjiba of Tunisia, Eynulla Fatullayev of Azerbaijan, and J.S. Tissainayagam of Sri Lanka have faced imprisonment, threats…

It is a sad irony: While the world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia itself is relapsing to some of its Soviet ways. In fact, for journalists, Russia is a more dangerous place now than it was during the Cold War. 

The two victims were energetic journalists, expert in their fields, fair in their reporting. They died in suspicious circumstances that have not been fully investigated.

August 2009News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

New York, August 18, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for an independent investigation into the death on Monday in a Baku prison hospital of Novruzali Mamedov, editor of the now-defunct minority newspaper Talyshi Sado, who had been in state custody since February 2007. 

The notion that three American hikers could innocently wander across the border from Iraqi Kurdistan into Iran has elicited some understandable skepticism. But a statement from their friend who stayed behind in his hotel because he was ill helps explain how the situation unfolded. 

Roxana Saberi, who was imprisoned in Iran for nearly four months, published a statement on her personal Web site to Euna Lee and Laura Ling after their release from North Korea on Tuesday. Saberi had previously expressed her support for the two imprisoned journalists in an interview with CPJ on June 9.

CPJ will be collecting signatures until July 31 on a Facebook petition in support of Maziar Bahari, Newsweek’s Tehran correspondent, who is being held without charge in Iran.