Bangkok, June 24, 2003—American free-lance journalist William Nessen turned himself over to Indonesian military authorities in the strife torn province of Aceh this morning, ending several days of tense negotiations. For several weeks, Nessen, 46, had been traveling with the separatist Free Aceh Movement, known by its Indonesian acronym as GAM. Indonesian military authorities had…
New York, June 23, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the Chinese government’s decision to ban the bimonthly business news magazine Caijing. According to Reuters, the June 20 edition of the influential magazine was barred from newsstands last week. Although the magazine reached subscribers during the weekend, authorities ordered additional copies held at the…
New York, June 23, 2003—The Russian Media Ministry issued a decree on Saturday, June 21, pulling the independent national television channel TVS off the air at midnight, replacing it with Sport TV, a state-run sports channel. TVS, the only channel in Russia that has remained highly critical of the Kremlin, was paralyzed for months due…
New York, June 20, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the Chinese government’s closure of the weekly newspaper Beijing Xinbao and other restrictions that appear to be part of a wider crackdown against the media in China. Beijing Xinbao, which is run by the national newspaper Workers’ Daily, was closed and its editors were…
New York, June 20, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is extremely alarmed about the detention of three Moroccan journalists, bringing the total number of journalists currently in custody there to five. Journalists Mohamed Al Herd and Abdel Majid Taher, editors at the local weekly newspaper Al-Sharq, and Mustapha Qashnini, editor of the local weekly…
New York, June 20, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is disappointed that the lower house of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, passed a series of legal amendments on Wednesday, June 18, that would severely restrict the media’s ability to report on the December 2003 parliamentary elections and the February 2004 presidential elections. The bill,…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the recent arrests of Sayeed Mirhassan Mahdawi and Ali Payam Sistany, editor-in-chief and deputy editor, respectively, of the weekly newspaper Aftab. On Tuesday, June 17, the two journalists were arrested in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, and the newspaper was closed after it published an article that Afghan authorities considered blasphemous.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply saddened by the death of our colleague Mohamad Jamal, a cameraman for the Indonesian government-run television station TVRI. We urge Your Excellency to order a thorough and impartial inquiry into his murder.