Attacks on the Press in 2011: Impunity Still the Norm in Russia
Russian investigators have adopted a more serious tone when discussing unsolved journalist murders, but officials still lack the will to apprehend masterminds of the killings. The lack of convictions takes a serious toll on investigative journalism. By Nina Ognianova
Pakistan’s Abbas: Journalists hostage to ‘power of gun’
CPJ award winner Mazhar Abbas penned a strong Sunday op-ed piece, “Death is the only news–Challenges of working in conflict zones,” for The News. It’s about conditions for journalists working in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Baluchistan. As Abbas says, “The killing of one journalist is a message for another.” He goes on…
India’s challenge: Intolerance vs. intellectual freedom
Because of criticism from Hindu fundamentalists, the showing of a documentary by filmmaker Sanjay Kak at the Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce in Pune has been indefinitely postponed. The conservative student organization Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parisha protested Kak’s film, “Jashn-e-Azadi” (How we celebrate freedom), which is critical of the Indian army’s role in Kashmir.…
Hrant Dink’s Voice
A murder that spawned a movement, the five-year anniversary of Hrant Dink’s high profile assassination drew huge crowds in Turkey to protest the judiciary’s decision to dismiss charges of conspiracy to silence one of the nation’s most outspoken critics. In this New Yorker article CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney describes the current backslide of press freedom in Turkey and the spectre…
Cabezas’ convicted killers are free, 15 years after murder
It was a cold winter morning more than 15 years ago. As part of my daily routine as a foreign correspondent, I opened my laptop to read the Argentine papers. I was shocked by a headline: my colleague José Luis Cabezas, a photographer for the newsweekly magazine Noticias, had been murdered. His bullet-ridden body was…
In Mexico mission, PEN speaks for a silenced press
The leading American author Russell Banks set the tone on Sunday as he stood among international writers and their local colleagues in Mexico City: “A nation’s journalists and writers, like its poets and story-tellers, are the eyes, ears, and mouths of the people. When journalists cannot freely speak of what they see and hear of…