2016
Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of May 29
Turkish journalists launch solidarity campaign for jailed colleagues The Free Journalists Association (ÖGC) on Thursday afternoon held a press conference in front of Istanbul’s Diyarbakır courthouse to announce a new campaign to show solidarity with their jailed peers. ÖGC co-chairs Nevin Erdemir and Hakkı Boltan read aloud a list of 46 detained journalists whose trials…
Time for justice in the killing of Vietnamese-American journalists
New York, May 27, 2016–The Committee to Protect Journalists will call for the cases of five Vietnamese-American journalists who were killed between 1981 and 1990 to be reopened, based on information uncovered by ProPublica and Frontline. The suspected assassinations were the subject of CPJ’s 1994 report, “Silenced, The Unsolved Murders of Immigrant Journalists in the…
CPJ denied ECOSOC consultative status after vote in UN NGO Committee
New York. May 26, 2016–The NGO Committee of the United Nations voted today to deny the Committee to Protect Journalists consultative status with the Economic Social Council (ECOSOC). Without such status, CPJ is unable to access U.N. bodies and processes, notably the Human Rights Council in Geneva, where accredited NGOs can deliver a counter-narrative to…
Journalist arrested in Nepal while covering protest
New York, May 25, 2016–Police in Nepal arrested the journalist Shesh Narayan Jha on Monday while he was photographing a protester splashing paint on the walls of a government complex in Kathmandu, according to the Federation of Nepali Journalists and press reports.
CPJ reacts to reports that Peter Thiel has funded lawsuits against Gawker
New York, May 25, 2016–The Committee to Protect Journalists today released the following statement from Executive Director Joel Simon regarding reports that entrepreneur Peter Thiel has been secretly covering the expenses for Hulk Hogan’s lawsuits against online news organization Gawker Media:
Azerbaijani reporter Khadija Ismayilova ordered released on suspended sentence
New York, May 25, 2016 — The Committee to Protect Journalists is relieved at the Azerbaijani Supreme Court’s decision today to free investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova, who had been imprisoned on trumped-up charges since December 2014. The court converted Ismayilova’s jail term into a three-and-a half-year suspended term, Reuters reported.
Two journalists disappear in Colombia while covering story of missing reporter
Bogotá, Colombia, May 24, 2016– Two Colombian TV journalists may have been kidnapped in Colombia’s dangerous northeast Catatumbo region, their employer said today. Reporter Diego D’Pablos and camera operator Carlos Melo, of Bogotá’s RCN TV station, were investigating the disappearance of Salud Hernández-Mora, a Spanish-Colombian journalist who was last seen Saturday afternoon in the village…
Global Magnitsky Act could be powerful weapon against impunity in journalist murders
Last week, the proposed Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act emerged from the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee with approval. The bill was passed by the Senate last year. If passed by the full House of Representatives and signed into law by the president, it has the potential to offer partial redress to one of…