CPJ protests espionage charges against four local journalists
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the arrest and imprisonment of four Liberian journalists from the Monrovia daily The News on espionage charges. The four journalists have now been in jail for nearly three weeks.
Leftist editor disappears
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned over the disappearance of Krishna Sen, editor of the Nepali-language weekly Janadesh. Though authorities claim Sen was released from Rajbiraj Jail on the night of March 10, following a March 8 Supreme Court ruling that his detention violated Nepal’s habeas corpus protections, local journalists and human rights advocates have reported him missing.
CPJ urges inquiry into murder of journalist
New York, March 12, 2001—In a recent letter to Arturo González Rascón, Attorney General of the State of Chihuahua, CPJ expressed its concern about the murder of José Luis Ortega Mata, the editor of the weekly Semanario de Ojinaga, based in Ojinaga, Chihuahua State. Ortega Mata, 37, was shot twice in the head at close…
COLOMBIAN JOURNALIST KILLED
Bogotá, July 3, 2001 — Colombian radio reporter Pablo Emilio Parra Castañeda was murdered with two shots to the head in central Tolima Department on June 27, according to local press reports. Parra, 50, was the founder and head of the community radio station Planadas Cultural Estéreo in the town of Planadas. He was also…
Four jailed journalists freed
New York, April 2, 2001 –Four journalists from the Liberian daily The News were released on March 30 after being jailed on espionage charges for over a month. International news sources reported that the government’s action came in response to an appeal by the Press Union of Liberia in addition to a written apology that…
Gazprom completes NTV takeover
April 3, 2001, New York – Russia’s state-dominated gas monopoly Gazprom used a shareholders meeting today to take formal control of the independent Russian television network, NTV. The new management removed NTV founder Vladimir Gusinsky and managing director Yevgeny Kiselyov from the station’s board of directors
Journalist jailed for defamation
New York, March 8, 2001 — Ethiopian journalist Tilahun Bekele, editor of the defunct Amharic-language weekly Fetash, was charged with criminal defamation by an Addis Ababa court and jailed, CPJ sources reported. Bekele has been in government custody since February 7, when he was arrested in connection with an article he had published more than…
Government blocks international newsmagazines
New York, March 7, 2001 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is troubled by the Malaysian government’s decision to block distribution of the international newsmagazines Asiaweek and the Far Eastern Economic Review, both published weekly from Hong Kong. “The Malaysian government has a history of using bureaucratic restrictions to control the media,” said CPJ…
CPJ meets with Gazprom Media chief
New York, March 6, 2001 — Alfred R. Kokh, general director of Russia’s Gazprom Media, visited the New York offices of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today to assert that his company’s long-running dispute with Vladimir Gusinsky’s NTV television network was purely a business matter. In the course of a two-hour meeting, CPJ executive…
Convicted of criminal defamation, two journalists face jail and crippling fines
Your Majesty: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply alarmed by the prison sentences and harsh financial penalties handed down on March 1 against two journalists at the weekly Le Journal Hebdomadaire. Abou Bakr Jamai, publications director of Le Journal Hebdomadaire and Ali Ammar, the newspaper’s general director, were convicted of defaming Foreign Minister Muhammed Ben Aissa and sentenced to jail terms of three and two months, respectively. Both men were also ordered to pay fines and damages totaling 2,020,000 Dirhams (about US$200,000). The charges stemmed from articles published last year in Le Journal Hebdomadaire’s now-defunct weekly predecessor, Le Journal. These had alleged that Ben Aissa profited from the purchase of an official residence during his tenure as Morocco’s ambassador to the United States in the late 1990s.