Posts Tagged ‘journalist’
July 27th, 2010
A journalist
narrowly escaped death in an incident in Veracruz, Mexico. Edgar López took photographs of a local mayor admonishing a police officer arrested for being drunk on duty. The mayor was angered by the presence of journalists and seized a camera from Enrique García. Later, when López left the station he was followed and stopped by eight officers. He was beaten and one of the officers fired a shot, which missed. The officers then fled the scene.
July 23rd, 2010
Burundi journalist Jean Claude Kavumbagu was arrested and
charged with treason on 17 July. Kavumbagu, the editor of online news service
Net Press, published an article that accused Burundi’s security forces of stealing and looting. It also suggested that they would be unable to prevent a terrorist attack on their country. It remains unclear why he was charged with the war-time offence of treason and not under the Burundi’s press law. On Saturday night, 15 radio stations in the capital Bujumbura
broadcast simultaneous messages calling for Kavumbagu’s release. The punishment for treason in Burundi is life imprisonment.
July 16th, 2010
A court in Kuwait City has
acquitted a journalist prosecuted for insulting Kuwait’s Prime Minister. Journalist
Mohammed Abdel Qader Al-Jassem and activist Khaled Al-Fadala, had their charges dropped on 12 July . Al-Jassem was accused of libelling the prime minister on a talk show entitled “Who is to blame, the government or the parliament?”. Al-Fadala’s case was initiated following an official complaint from the prime minister following the activist’s claim that the prime minister was an “enemy of freedom of expression” in Kuwait. Al-Jassem was jailed after he was convicted of
slander in April 2010 in a separate case.
July 12th, 2010
Indian journalist Hem Chandra Pandey was
killed during an armed encounter with state police in the southern state of Andrah Pradesh on 2 July. The journalist is reported to have been attempting to interview the leader of the banned Communist Party of India, Cherukuri Rajkumar. Pandey’s body was initially identified by local police investigating the incident as a Maoist cadre before his wife noticed his image in the press and corrected the authorities. The Indian Journalists’ Union (IJU) has called for an
independent judicial inquiry into the events surrounding Pradesh’s death.
July 8th, 2010
CNN
sacked their Middle East editor,
Octavia Nasr on July 7, after she expressed her admiration for the late Lebanese Cleric Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah on Twittter. On hearing of Ayatollah Fadlallah’s
death on Sunday, Nasr tweeted that the senior Shiite cleric, who is said to have inspired Hezbollah, was “one of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot”. In a
subsequent blog, she apologised claiming that the message was referring to Fadalallah’s progressive views on women’s rights. CNN officials condemned the post as a simplistic error of judgement and stated that Nasr’s position was no longer tenable because her credibility had been “compromised”.
June 25th, 2010
Heather Murdock, a US journalist, has been
expelled from Ethiopia. Local reports suggest her work as an investigative journalist in the restive Ogaden province was the reason for her expulsion. There have been a number of recent skirmishes between government forces and the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). Murdock had been working for the broadcaster
Voice of America (VOA) covering the aftermath of the general election. The Ethiopian government has recently enacted anti-terrorism legislation which empowers it to expel journalists which portray rebel groups in a favourable light and the authorities have been
blocking of Voice of America’s website and
jamming of its radio service in recent months.
June 16th, 2010
Joris Luyendijk: Hello Everybody!
24 June
7.00pm
£5 (includes a glass of wine)
Index on Censorship presents award winning journalist Joris Luyendijk, to speak about his recent book Hello Everybody! The book tells the story of Luyendijk’s experiences as a reporter in the Middle-East and of the great disparities between the truth and what is portrayed in the media.
More details at http://www.freewordonline.com/events/?event_id=98
Free Word Centre
60 Farringdon Road
London
EC1R 3GA
June 9th, 2010
Turkish journalist, Nedim Şener has been
acquitted following his prosecution for alleging police negligence in his book “The Dink Murder and the Intelligence Lies” with respect to the
murder of Turkish-Armenian reporter Hrant Dink. Accused of a “violation of secrecy” for publishing confidential information, Şener faced a three year prison sentence if convicted. However, on Friday 4 June, the court exonerated him, ruling that much of the “secret” information was already in the public domain prior to the books publication.
