Switzerland: Channel bows to Vatican pressure over offensive cartoons

The publicly-owned television channel TSR last week agreed to remove a series of cartoons which satirised child sex abuse by Catholic priests from its website, after protests from the Vatican. Some of the pictures were broadcast on an edition of TSR’s Infrared programme, which tackled the issue of paedophile priests.  However, a number of the more controversial images – one of which features Jesus Christ having sex with a child – were felt to be too sensitive and published only online.

Uighur PEN member barred from travelling abroad

Ilham Tohti, Uighur academic and PEN member has been banned from attending a Turkic Culture conference in Izmir, Turkey. Reports claim police officials arrived at his Beijing home on 15 April and warning him against making the trip. Tohti had already received his Turkish visa, and permission to attend the conference from Beijing’s Central Nationalities University, where he is the associated professor of Economics. He was previously detained during the Xinjiang riots last year.

Seventh journalist murdered in Honduras

Georgino Orellana, a producer and presenter for Television de Honduras, is the seventh journalist to be murdered in Honduras in the past six weeks. Orellana had just left the station’s studios in San Pedro Sula last night, when he was shot dead by an unidentified person. The motive is still unknown but police chief Hector Ivan Mejia insists that this murder “won’t go unpunished.” Honduras has been the world’s deadliest country for the media since the start of this year and, although the criminal violence across the country had always been high, the coup significantly implemented the plight of journalists.

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