CPJ joins call for Nigeria to drop anti-social media legislation
The Committee to Protect Journalists alongside 19 Nigerian, African and international organisations today signed an open letter addressed to the upper chamber of Nigeria’s parliament calling for the rejection of a bill which would undermine press freedom, stifle public opinion, and criminalize freedom of expression in Nigeria.
CPJ to release annual report on killed journalists
New York, December 16, 2015–The Committee to Protect Journalists will release its annual report on journalists killed in relation to their work. CPJ’s report includes a comprehensive catalog of journalists worldwide who were killed in connection to their work. A breakdown of the cases by country, medium, gender, freelancers, and the number of local versus…
Wife of Argentina reporter who denounced drug trafficking is raped
New York, December 15, 2015–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the attack Friday on the home of Argentine radio journalist Sergio Hurtado, who reported on drug trafficking. The journalist’s wife was raped in the attack in the town of San Antonio de Areco.
In Nigeria, journalist beaten outside court, has camera seized
At least 10 people, including officers of the Nigerian Prisons Service, allegedly beat Emmanuel Elebeke, a journalist with the independent daily Vanguard, at the premises of a high court in the capital Abuja on November 12, 2015, according to news reports. The reporter, who also takes photographs for the paper, told CPJ he was attacked…
Tanzania’s press wait to see if new president will reform troubling media laws
Elections in Tanzania passed smoothly in October, but several local journalists and a media lawyer told me the spectre of anti-press laws is casting a pall over critical reporting in the country and that hopes for legal reform under the newly elected President John Pombe Magufuli remain muted.
Inter-American Human Rights System, campaigns against defamation laws keep journalists from jail in Americas
When a prison guard told Ángel Santiesteban Prats that he would be released from jail on a scorching summer day in July, the Cuban independent writer and blogger decided to ignore him, brushing off the news as a cruel joke. By then, Santiesteban had already spent two years and five months in prison, half of…
Exile the price of freedom for Vietnamese blogger Ta Phong Tan
Nearly two months after her early release from a decade-long prison sentence, Vietnamese blogger Ta Phong Tan is settling into life in exile in the U.S. Hers was the latest in a series of U.S. State Department-negotiated releases of political prisoners held on anti-state charges on condition they promptly leave Vietnam, removed from their families,…
China, Egypt are worst jailers of journalists worldwide
Total number imprisoned globally falls slightly, CPJ finds New York, December 15, 2015–China is holding 49 journalists behind bars, the highest number ever recorded there, making it the worst jailer of journalists worldwide for the second year in a row, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found. The number of journalists jailed in Egypt and…
The EU must engage with Turkey on press freedom
CPJ joins calls for Brussels to push for release of jailed journalists Brussels, December 15, 2015–The European Union must not allow the challenges of the refugee crisis to deter it from confronting Turkey about its poor press freedom record, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and the European Federation of Journalists said at…
