Reflections on my fallen colleague: Yusuf Keynan
My mother once sarcastically told me she could allow for my death, but couldn’t live with seeing my leg or hand amputated or with a lost eye after reporting from a battlefield. It was when she first learned that I had been secretly studying journalism in May 2005. The news made her distraught. She wanted…
French muckraker Mediapart to appeal to European Court of Human Rights
In the course of a couple of hours on Wednesday, France was rocked by two judicial decisions with profound political repercussions for French politics and the press’ right to publish. Just as a baffled public learned that former President Nicolas Sarkozy had been put under formal investigation for corruption and influence-peddling, France’s highest court, the…
Despite recent convictions, Anna Politkovskaya’s murder remains unsolved
Nearly eight years after Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in an elevator near her apartment, authorities appear to have made little progress identifying the mastermind behind her murder. Although five men were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on June 9 for their roles in the slaying of the Novaya Gazeta journalist, her family…
Bomb explodes outside home of Express News’ Peshawar bureau chief
Jamshed Baghwan and his wife were leaving their home in the Murshidabad neighborhood in Peshawar on July 2, 2014, when they saw unidentified assailants on motorcycles placing a bomb outside their house, The Express Tribune reported. Baghwan is the Peshawar bureau chief of Express News, a TV channel owned by Express Media Group.
Tibetan writers released from prison in China
Two Tibetan writers were released from prison in Sichuan province on June 20, 2014, after completing four-year jail terms given to them in June 2010, according to reports. Jangtse Donkho and Buddha were convicted in the Aba Intermediate Court on charges of “incitement to split the nation,” reports said.
In Singapore, blogger under pressure, CPF under scrutiny
A critical Singaporean blogger continues to suffer financial and legal pressure because of a blog post that allegedly accused the city-state’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, of corruption. The episode is part of a disturbing pattern of government legal and financial pressure on critics, but it is also a lesson in how censorship can backfire.