4 Jan 2012 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood today announced plans to sue an independent newspaper for allegedly insulting the leader and its female members. Newspaper Al-Fagr published an article on 29 December by Mohamed al-Baz in which he reviewed a book written by Entissar Abdel Moniem, a female ex-member of the Brotherhood who slammed the organisation for their position on women. Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghazlan said that al-Baz slandered the group’s leader and its female members, and they would not tolerate defaming “honourable people under the veneer of free opinion.” The paper has also come under fire recently for printing articles against the ruling military leadership.
4 Jan 2012 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
A Syrian journalist with gunshot wounds in the head died on 2 January after three days in a Damascus hospital. Shukri Ahmed Ratib Abu Burghul was reportedly shot in the face deliberately on 30 December after hosting his weekly programme on Radio Damascus. Burghul was also deputy director of the censorship department of Al-Thawra, a state-owned newspaper.
4 Jan 2012 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
Vietnamese journalist Nguyen Van Khuong was arrested this week on suspicion of bribery after he ran an expose on corruption among traffic police in his newspaper, Tuoi Tre. The reporter is said to have paid a bribe of 15 million dong (458 GBP) to a police officer to secure the release of an impounded vehicle. The officer in question was arrested after Khuong’s story was published, and Khuong was suspended by the paper on 3 December. Tuoi Tre quoted him as saying he had made an error in gathering evidence for a series of stories about police corruption, but he did not say he had provided the bribe.
4 Jan 2012 | Asia and Pacific, Digital Freedom, Index Index, minipost
Cartoons Against Corruption, the website of Indian cartoonist Aseem Trivedi has been suspended by its internet host after complaints that it illegally showcased content mocking India’s constitution. The complaint by a Mumbai-based lawyer described the cartoons as “defamatory and derogatory”. One of the disputed works replaced the lions on India’s national emblem with wolves and changed the emblem’s inscription from “Bhrashtamev Jayate” [Long Live Corruption] to “Satyamev Jayate” [Long Live Truth]. Trivedi told the Wall Street Journal’s India Real Time his intention was to “depict the ailing truth of the nation and send across a strong message to the masses.”
