Censored

Social networking sites are under increasing pressure in China. Someone seems to have realized just how difficult they are to monitor when it comes to breaking news.

July marks the start of seal hunting season in Namibia, where hunters will be allowed to kill more than 90,000 seals. British journalist Jim Wickens and South African cameraman Bart Smithers filmed the event near Cape Cross Colony on Thursday morning for a British advocacy organization, Ecostorm. That is, until the journalists became the hunted.

New York, July 16, 2009–Distributors blocked the July 4-10 edition of The Economist from entering Thailand for an article that covered the mounting threat of lese majeste complaints to the country’s Internet freedom and freedom of expression, according to a local distributor and international news reports. 

New York, July 15, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the Palestinian Authority’s decision today to suspend the operations of Al-Jazeera in the West Bank after the satellite channel aired a controversial interview on Tuesday. The suspension, according to a Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information statement, will remain in place until “the judiciary issues a…

New York, July 14, 2009–The Sri Lankan government is continuing its offensive against the independent news media, blocking domestic access to a news Web site and smearing lawyers who are representing a leading newspaper.

New York, July 13, 2009–Chinese police should halt the detentions of journalists reporting on ethnic violence in Xinjiang and reveal the whereabouts of a Uighur academic and Internet commentator who is missing and reportedly detained in Beijing, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Dear Mr. President: We are writing to express our alarm at your administration’s increasing restrictions on the Nigerien private press. We are concerned by the ongoing censorship of stories about the public opposition to your plans for a constitutional amendment that would scrap presidential term limits.

Chinese authorities have, unusually, welcomed foreign reporters to Xinjiang since ethnic rioting broke out on Sunday in Urumqi between the Uighur minority and Han Chinese. A Beijing-based agency has even offered to facilitate travel, according to one writer who blogs from Shanghai. (CPJ hasn’t confirmed his story. Have any other reporters been approached in this…

New York, July 6, 2009–A criminal court has suspended a newspaper that reported on a horse-racing scandal, upholding a 2008 ruling. Its editor and publisher were also fined.