Posts Tagged ‘press freedom’
February 3rd, 2012
Ten
Iranian journalists were
arrested in January as the government continued its
crackdown on dissent ahead of March’s parliamentary elections. Recent reports identified three previously undisclosed arrests. Critical blogger Mehdi Khazali was arrested by security forces in Tehran on 9 January and charged with “insulting the supreme leader.” Authorities arrested Paris-based journalist Saeed Razavi Faghih on 17 January as he arrived at a Tehran airport; and on the same day security forces in Tabriz arrested Payman Pakmehr, founder of Tabriz news website, which covers the arrests of local activists, and charged him with “propagating against the regime.” Seven other journalists were also arrested last month.
February 3rd, 2012
Urdu-language television stations available via cable were
suspended in Quetta and other parts of Balochistan province on Wednesday, after the Cable Operators Association received threats from nationalist groups. Babark Khan, president of the Balochistan Cable Operators Association, told the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) that he received a threatening letter in writing from the Baloch Student Organisation on 31 January calling for the transmission of Urdu-language television stations to be halted and threatening consequences. The fraught region has faced separatist insurgency carried out by Baloch nationalists, who claim their grievances have been paid little attention by Pakistan media.
February 3rd, 2012
The United Nations Human Rights Committee have found that the defamation conviction of a
Philippines journalist violated the journalist’s
right to free expression. In the landmark ruling, the UN committee said that the prison sentence handed to journalist
Alexander Adonis of Bombo Radyo, following his reporting on an alleged affair between a Philippine congressman and a married woman, was “incompatible” with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UNHRC has given the Philippine government 180 days to provide “information about the measures taken to give effect to the Committee’s views”.
February 3rd, 2012
BBC’s Persian TV service has faced further
intimidation in Iran. It has been
reported that relatives of BBC staff in London have been detained and threatened by Iranian intelligence agents; top presenters have been targeted by rumours; and one employee has subjected to an online interrogation in London after a family member in Iran was jailed.
Since its launch in 2009 channel has suffered jamming and deliberate attempts to interfere with its signal. Tensions between Britain and Iran have worsened in recent weeks, with British regulator Ofcom
revoking Iranian state broadcaster Press TV’s UK licence last month for breaching the Communications Act.
February 1st, 2012
Several Tibetan-language blogs hosted in China are reported to have
gone offline today, amid a period of
severe unrest.
AmdoTibet’s blog section has been temporarily shut down, a message on the site reads, “due to some of the blog users not publishing in accordance with the goal of this site.” Tense events of recent weeks have included a stream of self-immolations in Tibet protesting against Chinese rule, and more recently,
deadly clashes between officials and demonstrators.
February 1st, 2012
The offices of weekly opposition newspaper Vecherny Krasnokamsk were
ravaged in an arson attack on 28 January in the south-west Russian Perm region. The paper’s editor Olga Kolokolova has linked the attack to a series of investigative reports recently published by the newspaper on corruption, which implicated the town’s mayor’s office.
January 31st, 2012
A
Cuban journalist is facing more than
ten years in prison for alleged corruption offences. José Antonio Torres, a correspondent for Granma, the party newspaper, in Santiago de Cuba, was detained on 11 March, 2011 after writing two articles criticising a major government infrastructure project. In the articles, Torres said experts undertaking the rebuilding of a key aqueduct intended to supply water to the city’s inhabitants, had claimed that “ineptitude” and “poor workmanship” had caused parts of the aqueduct wall’s veneer to fall off. The journalist also wrote that the project should have been “better planned.” Torres was
initially charged with being an “agent of the CIA” and leaking confidential information abroad.
January 31st, 2012
The publisher of an independent
Sudanese newspaper has
withheld an edition of the paper to protest censorship. National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS)
raided the offices of independent newspaper Al-Jaridah on Sunday, seizing all copies of the first edition of the paper since it was forced to close in 2011. Before the closure, the government had warned the publisher against columns by journalists who previously worked with Ahjras Al Hurriya, another independent newspaper that was banned. As a result of the confiscation, the newspaper’s publisher withheld the Monday edition of the paper in protest against the censorship.
