New York, February 4, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the recent release from prison of Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, an award-winning writer and journalist. Thuy, 47, had an unexpected trial before the Hanoi’s People’s Court on Thursday. She was sentenced to nine months and 10 days on charges of “causing public disorder” under Article…
FEBRUARY 3, 2008 Posted March 3, 2008 Rachid Niny, Al-Massae ATTACKED Rachid Niny, director of publication for the daily Al-Massae, told CPJ that around 8 p.m., three assailants attacked him very close to Al-Rabat al-Madina train station. He said the men, one of whom had a knife, came up behind him and started violently beating…
FEBRUARY 2008 Posted March 5, 2008 Wikileaks UNCENSORED A federal judge in San Francisco reversed a prior ruling to effectively shut down a California-based Web site that routinely posts documents alleging malfeasance by governments and other agencies. On February 29, Judge Jeffrey S. White vacated a permanent injunction that he had imposed only nine days…
JANUARY 26, 2008 Posted February 1, 2008 Syed Jaymal Zahiid, Malaysiakini DETAINED, BEATEN Police arrested Syed Jaymal, a correspondent for the online news provider Malaysiakini, while he was covering demonstrators protesting high food costs in Kuala Lumpur. He was charged with obstructing a police officer, a criminal offense punishable by two years in prison and…
New York, February 4, 2008–China’s onerous restrictions on the media in the run up to the 2008 Olympic Games, the erosion of press freedom in many of Africa’s new democracies, the criminalization of journalism in central Asia, and the increasing use of vague “antistate” charges to jail journalists around the world are among the troubling…
New York, January 31, 2008—As part of its ongoing campaign to urge China to adopt reforms promised when the International Olympic Committee awarded the country the 2008 Olympics, CPJ today delivered more than 500 advocacy cards to the Chinese Consulate in New York urging the government to release 29 jailed journalists. The IOC granted China…
Your Excellency, On the eve of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Committee to Protect Journalists urges the AU to actively defend and uphold press freedom across the continent. CPJ calls on your office to strengthen AU institutions dedicated to supporting press freedom, including the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the African Peer Review Mechanism, and remind states of their obligation to uphold press freedom as part of their membership in the union.
Dear Prime Minister, We are writing to express our great concern about the government’s denial of publishing licenses to five independent Ethiopian journalists freed last year from prison. We are calling on you to use all your influence to remove such administrative restraints, which contradict the government’s public assurances last year that former prisoners would be allowed to resume their work.
Dear President Karzai: The Committee to Protect Journalists has been closely monitoring the case of Parwez Kambakhsh, the journalism student who was sentenced to death on blasphemy charges by the provincial court in Balkh province. We are disturbed that the upper house of Afghanistan’s parliament gave their public support to this verdict today, according to The Associated Press and the BBC.