New York, May 3, 2004—Jean-Baptiste Hounkonnou, publication director of the Beninese independent daily Le Nouvel Essor, was granted a provisional release after spending six weeks in jail on criminal defamation charges. On April 27, Benin’s Court of Appeal granted Hounkonnou’s request for provisional release, and he was freed the same day, according to CPJ sources.…
May 3, 2004, New York—On Wednesday, May 5, the Supreme People’s Court in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, will hear the appeal of journalist Nguyen Vu Binh, who is currently serving a seven-year sentence on charges of espionage. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) calls for his immediate release and for all charges against him to be…
New York, April 30, 2004—The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which is based in Strasbourg, France, on Wednesday passed a resolution seeking sanctions against the authoritarian government of Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko for failing to properly investigate a series of abductions, including the July 2000 abduction of journalist Dmitry Zavadsky. PACE called…
New York, April 29, 2004—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns Tuesday’s vicious attack on Sumi Khan, a crime reporter with the newsmagazine Weekly 2000, who was knifed during an apparent kidnapping attempt in the southeastern port city of Chittagong. Khan was on her way home on the evening of April 27 when three unidentified…
New York, April 29, 2004—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed that two Brazilian radio journalists known for their coverage of corruption and crime were killed last week in remote regions. On April 24, radio host José Carlos Araújo was killed in the town of Timbaúba, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the state…
New York, April 29, 2004—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes the ruling by a Mexican appeals court sentencing the two men accused of murdering U.S. journalist Philip True in December 1998 to 20 years in prison. On Tuesday, April 27, a three-judge panel of the Jalisco State Supreme Court convicted two Huichol Indians, Juan…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the prolonged detention of three people–Ahmed Didi, Fathimath Nisreen, and Mohamed Zaki–affiliated with the online publication Sandhaanu who were arrested in early 2002. A fourth person, Ibrahim Luthfee, was also arrested, but escaped in May 2003.
New York, April 28, 2004—The independent television station Pyramida, based in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, was returned to the air yesterday after being prevented from broadcasting for 40 days, according to local and international reports. The station stopped broadcasting on March 17 because of a technical problem with the transmission equipment it shares with…
Bogotá, Colombia, April 27, 2004—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly condemns the assassination attempt against radio journalist Jorge Elías Corredor Quintero that killed his 20-year-old stepdaughter, in northeastern Colombia. Corredor, who hosts the daily program “El Pregón del Norte” for La Voz del Norte radio station in the city of Cúcuta, Norte de Santander…