Reports have emerged about the arrest of three young Tibetans after they used instant messages to distribute recordings and photographs of the Dalai Lama. The arrests of Gyaltsen, Nymia Wangchuk, and Yeshe Namkha are the latest in the clampdown...
Tunisian President Zine al Abidine Ben Ali has won a fifth term in office, receiving 86% of the vote. The election outcome was expected. Tunisia’s most prominent opposition figures did not take part in the election, while one of Ali’s challengers...
Junior Justice Minister Bridget Prentice revealed on 21 October that Justice Secretary Jack Straw has called on senior judges and lawyers representing major newspapers to discuss the fit and proper use of super injunctions. It follows the issuing...
Influential businessman and activist Maksharip Aushev was shot dead in Kabardino-Balkaria on 25 October. Aushev had become a vocal critic of the Ingushetia administration, especially its ex-president Murat Zyazikov, after the kidnapping of his son...
To ensure another re-election for President Ben Ali, Tunisia’s government has stepped up its campaign of repression against the media, reports Rohan Jayasekera
Nikol Pashinyan, editor-in-chief of prominent opposition newspaper Haykakan Zhamanak, faces a prison sentence of up to 10 years for “organising mass disorder”. Pashinyan was responsible for organising the March 2008 mass protests that followed the disputed presidential elections. Pashinyan went into hiding following the events, but gave himself in to police on 1 July. Pashinyan, however, argued that his actions in organising the protest were within the law. Moreover, his lawyer urged the court to change the judge hearing the case, as current judge Mnatsakan Martirosyan had been highly criticised for his handling of a similar case earlier in the year. The trial began on the 20 October. (IPI)
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REN TV and St Petersburg’s Fifth Channel, the last semi-independent private TV stations, will come under state control next year. According Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, news bulletins on both channels’ news bulletins will be restructured next year. The state-owned, pro-Kremlin English language television station “Russia Today” will take over responsibility for their news broadcasts from 2010.
Campaigners accused the Kremlin of killing off the last vestiges of independent television in Russia.
“This means independent TV will be destroyed. It will disappear,” said Oleg Ptashkin, a former correspondent with Russia’s state-run Channel One TV who now runs an independent journalists’ union. (Guardian)
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On 20 October, two Al-Jazeera journalists were assaulted and briefly detained in Zimbabwe while covering a cabinet meeting which Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s had boycotted.
Cameraman Austin Gundani and his reporter colleague Haru Mutasa were physically assaulted and detained at a small police post located at Munhumutapa Building and before being transferred to Harare Central Police Station. They were released three hours later.
In past years Zimbabwe has imposed harsh media laws that saw local newspapers shut down and journalists and editors jailed. The new government has promised to relax the laws and invite the international media back in. (RSF)
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On 19 October, more than a hundred cooperative miners attacked the headquarters of La Razón, a newspaper based in the Bolivian administrative capital La Paz.
The attack took place during a protest march over the ownership of a site in the Murillo province of the La Paz department. According to local media, the demonstrators exploded dynamite cartridges outside the offices of the newspaper. Nobody was injured in the attack.
“Next time it could be worse, so a clear message must be sent that violence against the media will not be tolerated”, said Alison Bethel McKenzie, Deputy Director of the International Press Institute (IPI), in a statement condemning the attacks. (La Razón)
John Kampfner: British National Party leader Nick Griffin received the oxygen of publicity he craved by winning his spot on Question Time, Britain’s premier TV debate show, but at the end of a nation’s ordeal, democracy emerged intact.