New York, August 8, 2005—Ethiopia’s Supreme Court has sentenced a newspaper editor to one month in jail on a contempt charge after the editor refused to identify an unnamed source who criticized an earlier court ruling. The editor of a second paper was fined in a related case. Tamrat Serbesa, editor-in-chief of the private Amharic-language…
JULY 27, 2005 Posted: August 8, 2005 El Universal LEGAL ACTION The Attorney General’s Office opened a criminal investigation against the Caracas-based daily El Universal after it published an editorial that criticized the prosecutor’s office and the judiciary. The probe was launched under desacato (contempt) provisions, which criminalize expressions deemed offensive to public officials and…
AUGUST 6, 2005 Posted: August 26, 2005 Albert Santiago Du Bouchet Hernández IMPRISONED Du Bouchet Hernández was arrested on August 6, tried three days later, and handed a one-year jail term without the knowledge of his family who found out about his detention only after he smuggled a note out of prison. He was the…
New York, August 5, 2005—A judge in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, convicted two staffers of Internews Network, a U.S.-based media training and advocacy organization, on Thursday of producing television programming without a license and publishing information illegally. Former Internews director Khalida Anarbayeva and accountant Olga Narmuradova will not have to serve the prescribed six-month jail…
Dear Minister Lavrov: The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the Foreign Ministry’s pattern of using accreditation, visa and other regulations to control and intimidate journalists reporting on the war in Chechnya for foreign media. The Foreign Ministry escalated this campaign against foreign news media by moving this week to bar the U.S. television network ABC from reporting in Russia.
New York, August 4, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely concerned by the Nepalese government’s threat to pull the license of independent radio station Nepal FM 91.8 for defying an official ban on broadcasting news. “The independent broadcasting of FM radio news is protected by Nepal’s constitution and is vital for the free flow…
New York, August 4, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about recent threats against Glenda M. Gloria, managing editor of Newsbreak, and Mei Magsino-Lubis, Batangas correspondent for the Philippine Daily Inquirer. A funeral wreath was delivered to the residence of Gloria’s mother on Tuesday night, according to a statement released by the Manila-based…