MARCH 17, 2005 Posted: March 30, 2005 Marielos Monzón, Radio Universidad Gabriel Mazzarovich, Radio Universidad THREATENED, HARASSED Monzón, a radio journalist based in Guatemala City, received several threatening phone calls. Mazzarovich, Monzón’s Uruguayan-born producer, was falsely reported dead to Uruguayan media.
Your Excellency: Today marks the six-month anniversary of the imprisonment of Zhao Yan, a news assistant at The New York Times who has been held incommunicado and without charge or trial since September 17, 2004. The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores Zhao’s ongoing detention, which violates international law and the 2004 amendment to the Chinese Constitution safeguarding human rights.
MARCH 16, 2005 Posted: March 17, 2005 Narayan Wagle, Kantipur HARASSED Police delivered a letter to Wagle, editor of Kantipur, Nepal’s largest daily, ordering him to present himself at the criminal investigation branch of the Kathmandu police office on the morning of March 17. Wagle told CPJ that he has been asked for “clarification” of…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by the apparently secret enactment of two new laws that threaten press freedom in the Gambia. Your Excellency signed these laws on December 28, 2004, but their promulgation was not made public until two months later, according to news reports and local sources. CPJ raised its concerns about these laws in a March 14, 2005, meeting with your ambassador to the United States, H.E. Dodou Bammy Jagne in Washington, D.C., attended by CPJ board member Clarence Page and CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Julia Crawford.
New York, March 16, 2005—More than 100 prominent writers, editors, and reporters throughout Latin America joined the Committee to Protect Journalists today in calling on Cuban President Fidel Castro to immediately release 23 jailed journalists, saying the two-year-long imprisonments violate “the most basic norms of international law” and represent “an affront to human dignity.” The…
New York, March 16, 2005—BBC reporter Raphael Tenthani and Mabvuto Banda of the independent daily The Nation have been released on bail after being held overnight by police in the capital, Lilongwe. The two journalists were arrested yesterday at their homes in the southern city of Blantyre for reporting that the president feared ghosts may…
New York, March 16, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned that Mauritanian authorities detained a journalist for reporting on the illegal slave trade. According to press reports and a Mauritanian source, police detained freelance journalist Mohamed Ould Lamine Mahmoudi on Sunday, March 13, after he interviewed a woman in the southern town Mederdra who…
New York, March 16, 2005—Police delivered a letter today to Narayan Wagle, editor of Kantipur, Nepal’s largest daily, ordering him to present himself at the criminal investigation branch of the Kathmandu police office tomorrow morning. Wagle told CPJ that he has been asked for “clarification” of news published earlier in the week. “The harassment of…
New York, March 16, 2005—Russian authorities in Chechnya and the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod are escalating their campaign of harassment and intimidation against Pravo-Zashchita (Rights Defense), a monthly newspaper that covers human rights abuses in Chechnya, according to local press reports. The newspaper is published by the nongovernmental organization Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS)…
New York, March 16, 2005—In a major setback in the decade-long quest to bring the killers of slain Russian journalist Dimitry Kholodov to justice, the Military Collegium of Russia’s Supreme Court on Monday upheld a June 2004 acquittal of six military officers accused of murdering Kholodov. Kholodov, a reporter for the Moscow-based independent newspaper Moskovsky…