At the Foreign Ministry’s weekly press conference today, Jiang Yu, the ministry’s spokeswoman, left hanging for now whether or not China will continue allowing foreign journalists to travel around China without asking permission from the government, or whether they will be allowed to interview anyone who agrees to speak with them. The new relaxed rules…
The San Francisco-based Web site Indy Media has posted another article about the arrests of journalists at the GOP Convention last week, with specific attention paid to the case of Democracy Now! reporter Amy Goodman. CPJ reported on the arrest of Goodman and other journalists covering the RNC last week, and posted videos of the…
New York, September 8, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release of a cameraman held by U.S. forces in Iraq, and calls on the military to release a freelance journalist working for Reuters who has been held since Tuesday. Omar Husham, 28, a cameraman with Baghdad TV, a satellite channel owned by the Iraqi…
New York, September 8, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the decision of a Panamanian civil court on Friday to order the seizure of assets belonging to a weekly newspaper, as well as portions of two staff members’ salaries. The ruling came after the publication ran a story on alleged tax evasion by…
New York, September 8, 2008–U.S. filmmaker Andrew Berends continues to be interrogated by security forces in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, while authorities have told translator Samuel George to report to security in Port Harcourt on Wednesday, local journalists told CPJ. Today marks the ninth day security forces have conducted day-long interrogations of Berends and George on…
New York, September 8, 2008—South Ossetian and Russian authorities should immediately release three members of a Polish television crew detained today near the village of Karaleti in the buffer zone between South Ossetia and Georgia, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. Authorities confiscated equipment and cell phones from the Telewizja Polska (TVP) crew and were…
New York, March 11, 2008—Six people affiliated with the Sri Lankan news Web site OutreachSL have been detained by the Terrorist Investigation Division of the Sri Lankan police force in Colombo since last week, according to Agence France-Presse and local news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists urges the government of Sri Lanka to charge…
New York, September 5, 2008–Dozens of journalists were arrested while covering demonstrations on the third day of the Republican National Convention. They included two Associated Press reporters who, along with other members of the media, were documenting a few hundred protesters trapped by police on both sides of bridge over an interstate highway. The protesters…
A couple of weeks ago we reported on Sri Lankan journalist J.S. Tissainayagam, who was detained by Terrorist Investigation Division forces in March. At first glance, his arrest seemed related to a Tamil news site he edits. But local journalists tell us the site was innocuous and as the months passed, no charges were forthcoming.…
In the news today, Reuters is covering the provisional weekend release of American filmmaker Andrew Berends in Nigeria. Berends was arrested on espionage charges by the Nigerian military along with his translator Samuel George on August 31. VOA News and The Lower Hudson News are also running stories about his release.