5 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
Catholic blogger Paulus Le Son was arrested in Hanoi yesterday during a major police operation targeting around 10 Catholics. Reports suggest Son’s arrest, his second this year, is linked to his attempts to cover court proceedings against cyber-dissident Cu Huy Ha Vu, who is currently appealing against his seven-year jail term for disseminating anti-government propaganda, having advocated a multi-party system. Vietnam was ranked 165th out of 178 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2010 press freedom index.
4 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
On Tuesday it was reported that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa threatened the chairman of The Sunday Leader, Lal Wickrematunge, by phone on 19 July. In response to an article that claimed China had given the president and his son millions of dollars to be used “at their discretion”, Rajapaksa reportedly told Wickrematunge, “you can attack me politically, but if you attack me personally, I will know how to attack you personally too.” The Sunday Leader is Sri Lanka’s only independent English-language newspaper, and has long been targeted by the government. The paper claims the 2009 murder of its former head, Lasantha Wickematunge (Lal’s brother), was never investigated fully.
4 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
40,000 copies of Izvestia Kaliningrada, a weekly published in Kaliningrad, Russia, were seized by regional governors on 29 July. Its editor was also detained for several hours at the Regional Centre for Combating Extremism. The edition, due to have been published on the eve of a visit by President Medvedev, contained an open letter to the Russian leader signed by more than 2,000 local residents calling for the regional government’s removal because several of its members were implicated in corruption. The head of the regional centre, Alexander Shelyakov, told the Interfax news agency that he intervened after being informed that the issue contained “extremist statements.” This is not a one-off event: on 4 July in St Petersburg of 90 per cent of the copies of the business weekly Kommersant Vlast were seized. The edition criticised the city’s governor Valentina Matviyenko.
4 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
The provincial minister responsible for information and media in Nord-Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, has suspended a Mishapi Voice TV radio host until further notice. In a 30 July letter to the station’s CEO, Naason Kubuya Ndoole accused Jacques “Djasadjasa” Nyamugenda of “defamatory and insulting comments about the local authorities.” He claimed that, during broadcasts on the evening of 29 July, Nyamugenda insulted a provincial minister “whose conduct is irreproachable.” Ndoole did not, however, give details of the offending comments or name the minister he believed had been defamed. In the same letter, he asked Mishapi Voice TV’s chief to “initiate disciplinary action against this programme host as soon as you receive this letter”, adding that Nyamugenda “is not permitted to work for any other broadcaster in this province until further notice.”
