Iran

Iraqi Kurdish political leaders have cultivated an image of freedom and tolerance, but that increasingly clashes with reality. As the independent press has grown more assertive, attacks and arrests have increased.

Dear Minister Albar, The Committee to Protect Journalists warmly welcomes your April 20 statement indicating that your ministry intends to abolish the annual licensing renewal system for Malaysian news publications. As you noted in your statement, the decision will expand Malaysian press freedom.

See also: Journalists killed   |   Media workers killed   |   Background reports Here is a statistical look at journalists abducted by armed groups in Iraq and held for periods ranging from several hours to many weeks. The analysis, covering the period 2003-09, is followed by capsule reports detailing each abduction. 

New York, March 17, 2008—Mexican federal police arrested a member of the Arellano Félix drug cartel on Saturday on suspicion of involvement in the 1997 shooting of Zeta Editor Jesús J. Blancornelas. Federal police officers arrested Saúl Montes de Oca Morlett in the tourist city of San Felipe, Baja California, as he was getting ready…

New York, March 6, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about the fate of three reporters for Azadi, an Urdu-language daily in the unstable southwestern province of Baluchistan. Two have gone missing in the past several days, while the third disappeared on November 30. Reporter Hameed Baloch disappeared on Monday from the town of…

New York, February 14, 2008—CPJ is concerned by reports that police in Denmark have uncovered a plot to kill the author of a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad—one of 12 drawings that sparked a global controversy two years ago. Danish security services arrested a Danish citizen of Moroccan origin and two Tunisians on Tuesday. At…

Nina Ognianova Huffington Post February 14, 2008 As published in the Huffington Post

Worldwide Survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists

Rewriting the Law to Make Journalism a CrimeBy Nina OgnianovaIn its 17 years on the air, Moscow-based Ekho Moskvy Radio has enjoyed, by Russian standards, extraordinary editorial independence. Nearly alone among Russian broadcasters in its critical approach, the station employs some of the country’s most outspoken journalists, who produce in-depth reporting on the most sensitive…

AZERBAIJAN Ignoring international opinion, the authoritarian government of President Ilham Aliyev clamped down on opposition and independent media and became the world’s fifth-leading jailer of journalists, with nine reporters and editors behind bars when CPJ conducted its annual census on December 1. On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, CPJ ranked the oil-rich Caspian Sea…