Posts Tagged ‘journalist’
September 13th, 2010
The editor of opposition newspaper Listok has been
charged with defamation after calling the administration of the Altai republic a “nest of vipers”. He also referred to the governor of Altai as an “alcoholic”. If convicted, Sergei Mikhailov will face up to four years in prison and a fine of up to $14,000. Supporters of the journalist say the case is politically motivated, particularly since Mikhailov was elected to Altai’s legislature in March.
August 24th, 2010
Police in eastern Ukraine have reclassified the case of a missing journalist as ”
premeditated murder“. Vasyl Klymentyev, chief editor and reporter for newspaper Novyi Stil, was
last seen on 11 August getting into a BMW with an unknown man. The Kharkiv-based weekly newspaper is well known for reporting on corruption in local government and law enforcement. Klymentyev’s most recent articles criticised a local prosecutor and head of the regional fiscal police, and the
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged investigators to focus on his journalism as a motive.
Klymentyev’s deputy said that the editor had been threatened several times before and had been offered bribes to keep damaging information quiet.
July 27th, 2010
Emadden Baghi, an Iranian human rights activist and journalist, has been given
a year-long prison sentence and banned from any political activity for five years. He was arrested during
anti-government protests in 2009. He faces a second trial relating to accusations surrounding an
interview he conducted with cleric Hossein Ali Montazeri for BBC Persia. Baghi is a previous winner of the French Republic’s Human Rights Prize and the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders.
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”.
