Posts Tagged ‘press censorship’
June 28th, 2011
Uzbek journalists, Malohat Eshonqulova and Saodat Omonova, have been detained and fined 2.94 million soms (around £1000) for holding an unauthorized protest
on Monday morning.
The two women, who have now begun a hunger strike, held up placards in front of the presidential palace in Tashkent which read “Dear Islam Karimov, please grant us an audience”.
The pair were arrested after around four hours of protesting on 27 June, a day officially marked by Uzbekistan as the “
Day of Media Workers“. Eshonqulova and Omonova
were fired from state television channel Yoshlar last December, three days after they staged protests against media censorship and are still fighting a court battle to appeal their dismissal.
June 24th, 2011
Members of the Sufi group,
Ahlu Sunna Waljama (ASWJ), shut down Radio Dhusamareb of central
Somalia on Wednesday evening. Seven masked intruders forced staff to evacuate the building and the station’s editor was arrested and taken into custody. He has now been released without charge. Less than
24 hours before the attack,
Al Shabaab militants silenced the Voice of Hiran radio station in the town of Beletweyne.
November 2nd, 2010
Authorities in Malawi have
banned a weekly tabloid newspaper for not registering. The ruling comes a year after The Weekend Times published its first edition. The newspaper, renowned for its sensationalist reporting on scandalous stories about politicians and celebrities, is published by Blantyre Newspapers Ltd, a company owned by the family of former dictator Kamuzu Banda. Three months ago, President Bingu we Mutharika
threatened to shut down newspapers deemed to have lied that one million Malawians will need food aid.
September 3rd, 2010
Armed police raided the offices of opposition magazine the New Times on 2 September. The magazine’s editor Yevgenia Albats was repeatedly asked to hand over interview recordings that were used in a report on alleged abuses of power by OMON riot police.
The report, which cited police sources making accusations about their superiors, prompted the force to launch a libel case in February. Albats gave police an interview transcript, but
withheld any information concerning the identities of sources. OMON police are frequently deployed to break up demonstrations, and were involved in
detaining 100 protesters at Strategy 31′s rally in Moscow on 31 August.
Concerns for press freedom have also been raised in Belarus this week, when the country’s oldest independent newspaper said that it
faces closure due to interference from the government. The editor of Babruiski Kurier, Anatol Sanatsenka, said that the publication is in a difficult financial situation after authorities banned any advertising in the newspaper. He added that local officials told him that Babruiski Kurier “does not write about the right things”.
April 15th, 2010
Journalists from television
channel TVi have written an open letter to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, demanding that he intervene to stop the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) pressuring journalists. SBU has demanded that TVi present them with documents regarding a tender, the deal angered rival companies affiliated with the SBU’s director, Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy, whose wife runs one of TVi’s competitors. Journalists expressed concerns that SBU is turning into “a structure which backs personal and business interests of the head of the SBU, Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy, and members of his family”. And in a seperate incident on Tuesday, Ukrainian police intimidated journalists and camermen at the newspaper Ekspres. The paper’s director was arrested in Livy on charges of tax evasion. Journalists who came to the police station to cover the story claim they were handled brutally by police. The paper had published an investigative report on corruption among lawmakers, triggering protests that disrupted traffic on a busy highway near Lviv. The attack is the fourth such incident involving journalists since the inauguration of President Viktor Yanukovych to the presidency in February.
March 19th, 2010
Following our report on the
Sri Lankan press crackdown, the office of the president has issued a
statement on Tuesday denying the existence of the
leaked government “hit-list” that contained 35 journalists, lawyers and activists. One of the top targets on the list, J. C. Weliamuna, the chairperson of Transparency International Sri Lanka, faces imminent arrest this week
according to the Asian Human Rights Commission.
August 7th, 2009
Six journalists in Gambia have been jailed for two years each after being found guilty of criticising the country’s president. The journalists from the newspaper Foroyaa and weekly publication The Point were convicted of sedition and defamation for comments critical of President Yahya Jammeh. Read more
here
July 29th, 2009
Filipino radio journalist Godofredo Linao was shot near the offices of Radyo Natin by two unidentified men. The men fired four shots at Linao as he was about to board his motorcycle, killing him on the spot. The motive for the attack is unclear. Linao also worked as a political spokesman and may have been targeted for his political broadcasts. Linao is the fourth journalist to die in the Philippines in the past two months. Read more here
