Iran: CPJ calls for humanitarian release as Ramadan ends
New York, September 10, 2009—As the end of Muslim holy month of Ramadan approaches, Maziar Bahari, a Canadian-Iranian national, continues to be held in an Iranian jail under deplorable conditions. The Newsweek correspondent has been detained for 80 days since he was arrested on June 21 as part of a post-election crackdown. The Committee to…
Rwandan minister: ‘It’s OK to be anti-government’
CPJ sat down recently with the Rwandan minister of information, Louise Mushikiwabo, who spoke of several media developments, including a new press law. “I am convinced the new legislation will help professionalize our media—there were many holes in the former law,” she told CPJ. Some, however, do not share her enthusiasm.
To blog in Cuba: defying hazards, enjoying freedom
I share with my fellow Cuban independent journalists the drunkenness of writing freely under a totalitarian dictatorship; of experiencing the catharsis of denouncing the regime’s violations; of feeling useful to my people knowing that, in the long run, what I write will contribute to a better future.
The alternative Cuban blogosphere
At the end of the 1990s, Cuban dissidents sought out different media to disseminate the reality of the island. Reports on violations by a government that proclaims itself a human rights’ defender begin to circulate around the world, damaging the image that the socialist state wants to project to the rest of the world. This…
Walter Cronkite: ‘He still believed in it all’
The projected image of Walter Cronkite smiled out at a crowd of hundreds of journalists, family, and friends at a memorial in Manhattan today. From a lectern beneath this image, President Barack Obama spoke about the late CBS anchor’s steadfast professionalism, a quality never more needed than today, in the midst of severe political and…
Radio Horyaal director, jailed in Somaliland, should be freed
New York, September 9, 2009—Police should release Mohamed Osman, director of Radio Horyaal, who has been held without charge since his arrest on Saturday outside parliament in Hargeisa, capital of the breakaway republic of Somaliland, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
Online journalist beaten in southern Siberia
New York, September 9, 2009—Regional authorities must launch a thorough probe into a brazen attack on Mikhail Afanasyev, editor of the online magazine Novy Fokus, and examine whether his journalism was the motive, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
CPJ saddened by death of kidnapped translator
We issued the following statement after Afghan journalist Sultan Mohammed Munadi was killed during a raid to free him and his colleague, New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell. The two journalists had been kidnapped in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz on Saturday…