Imprisoned

Bangkok, July 25, 2017–A Vietnamese court today sentenced blogger Tran Thi Nga to nine years in prison and five years’ probation on charges of “spreading propaganda against the state,” according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the verdict and called on Vietnamese authorities to cease jailing journalists.

New York, July 24, 2017–An Azerbaijani court’s sentencing of Faiq Amirov, financial director of the independent newspaper Azadliq, is a further serious blow to press freedom in the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, July 21, 2017–Moroccan authorities should immediately release Badil Editor-in-Chief Hamid al-Mahdaoui, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Police arrested al-Mahdaoui yesterday as he traveled to the Rif area of northern Morocco to cover protests, according to one of the journalist’s colleagues and news reports.

New York, July 20, 2017–A Baku court today convicted Russian-Israeli blogger Aleksandr Lapshin to three years in jail for illegally crossing the state border, international and Azerbaijani media reported. The charges are related to three trips that Lapshin made between April 2011 and June 2016 to the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Azerbaijan and Armenia…

New York, July 17, 2017–Nigerian authorities should drop all charges against Luka Binniyat and release the journalist from jail immediately, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. A judge ordered the journalist to be detained on charges of “breach of public peace” and false reporting over an article he wrote for the daily, Vanguard, according…

Bangkok, July 17, 2017–A ministerial proposal to amend Myanmar’s 2013 Telecommunications Law falls short of the changes needed to guarantee press freedom, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The statute has been repeatedly abused to stifle online speech and jail journalists, CPJ has found.

I have no pity for Chinese President Xi Jinping, who dug himself into a deep public relations hole with the unnecessarily cruel treatment of China’s Nobel Laureate and political dissident, who died this week. Liu died of liver cancer in a Chinese hospital, after receiving medical parole in June from prison, where he was diagnosed…

Nairobi, July 7, 2017–Authorities in Puntland should immediately release journalist Ahmed Ali Kilwe, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Security forces in Garowe, the administrative capital of the semi-autonomous region of Somalia, have detained Ahmed, the founder of the news website Puntlandone.com, since July 2, according to media reports.

Washington, D.C., July 6, 2017–Chinese authorities should drop all charges and immediately free Yang Xiuqiong, a contributor to the banned human rights news website 64 Tianwang, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Turkish president tells German newspaper jailed correspondent is a terrorist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in an interview published yesterday, told the German newspaper Die Zeit that Die Welt Turkey correspondent, Turkish-German dual national Deniz Yücel, is a terrorist because he interviewed a leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist…