2 Dec 2009 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, News and features
A Tunisian court has given a journalist a three-month prison sentence for broadcasting images of another person without their consent. Zouhair Makhlouf, an online journalist and member of the opposition party was arrested in the run-up to a presidential election in October. The result comes after journalist Ben Brik, a staunch critic of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s government, was handed a six-month prison term for beating up a woman on the street. His lawyers said he was the victim of a police operation to entrap him. Read more here
2 Dec 2009 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
The editor of Sri Lankan newspaper Udayan based in Jaffna has said he will lodge a complaint with authorities after receiving another threatening letter. The letter said “You may have to face danger. Completely stop publishing anything in the nature of boosting the terrorists or that gives the impression that the terrorists are still active.” Udayan has been threatened in the past. In 2006 one of their printing warehouses was burnt down and editorial offices fired at. The editor E Saravanabavan told the Sunday Leader that Udayan would continue to publish, albeit cautiously and doubted that an investigation would yield positive results. Read more here
2 Dec 2009 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
Indonesia’s censorship board has banned an Australian-made film about the alleged murder five journalists by Indonesian troops during the 1975 invasion of East Timor. The ruling came just hours before a planned premiere screening of Balibo was due to take place forcing organisers to cancel. Jakarta maintains they were killed accidentally in cross-fire however in 2007 an Australian coroner concluded that the journalists had been executed. A sixth Australian journalist was killed in Dili shortly afterwards while investigating the deaths. Read more here
2 Dec 2009 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
High Court judge, Mr Justice Eady suggested yesterday that Parliament has no power to repeal privacy laws that have developed over the past decade and claimed he has been singled out as a target by the press. Eady, who has presided over almost all of the most high-profile privacy cases in recent years says he was targeted by Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre, after he awarded an unprecedented £60,000 in damages to Max Mosley, for a breach of privacy by the News of the World. Eady also said he thought “libel tourism” was a “phenomenon” largely invented by the media. Read more here and here
