New York, May 3, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for an immediate and full investigation into the shooting death today of newspaper columnist Nicholas Cervantes, 65. According to media reports, he was shot three times in the chest by a group of four or five assailants outside of his house in suburban Manila. Cervantes,…
New York, May 3, 2006—Mario Spezi, an Italian journalist whose new book raises questions about a serial murder investigation, was released from a prison in the central city of Perugia on Saturday, according to local and international press reports. An appeals court that day ordered that Spezi be released immediately, but it did not issue…
New York, May 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the recent arrests and criminal prosecutions for defamation of three journalists with the independent Kurdish weekly Hawlati in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region. On Tuesday, a criminal court in the city of Sulaymaniyah sentenced Twana Osman, editor-in-chief of Hawlati, and Asos Hardi, the paper’s…
New York, May 2, 2006—The trial of journalist Yang Xiaoqing has been set for May 10 in the county court of Longhui, in south central China’s Hunan province, the same county where Yang’s reporting exposed alleged graft among local officials, his wife and lawyer told CPJ today. “It is ludicrous to think that Yang Xiaoqing…
New York, May 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns today’s attack on the Tamil-language daily Uthayan. Editor N. Vithayatharan confirmed to CPJ that five masked gunmen killed two employees and wounded at least two others, one seriously, when they sprayed the paper’s office with automatic weapons fire in Jaffna. CPJ calls on the government…
New York, May 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the detention of an opposition newspaper editor for criticizing the president of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. Viktor Shmakov, editor-in-chief of Provintsialniye Vesti (Provincial News), was arrested April 28 by Federal Security Service (FSB) agents in Ufa, the capital of the semi-autonomous republic,…
New York, October 5, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned that Sudanese security forces have held Abu Obeida Abdallah, a reporter for the pro-government daily Al-Ra’y Al-Aam, incommunicado and without charge since Friday. “No evidence has been disclosed to suggest Abu Obeida Abdallah has committed a crime,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said.…
APRIL 24, 2006 Posted: May 1, 2006 Anselme Masua, Radio Okapi ATTACKED Soldiers from the Republican Guard, a military detachment that falls under the president’s authority, attacked Masua, a journalist for Radio Okapi, at a military base in the central city of Kisangani, according to a United Nations spokesman and the local press freedom organization…
APRIL 20, 2006Posted: May 1, 2006Fortune Bemba, ThalassaHARASSED, LEGAL ACTION Bemba, director of the private Brazzaville-based weekly Thalassa, was arrested and charged with defamation, insulting the head of state, and “propagating false news,” according to the press freedom organization Journaliste en Danger (JED), which is based in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. Those charges are not criminal…