29 Mar 2011 | Index Index, minipost, News
Reporters Aleksandr Lomashkin and Ales Asiptsu were arrested in separate incidents on Thursday, 24 March. Both were detained on the eve of “Freedom Day”, an unofficial holiday traditionally celebrated by members of the opposition. Lomashkin is a Russian journalist who worked in Belarus and founded the human rights website Svoboda. He was forced to get off a train at the Belarusian border and was searched by two officers who claimed that they were looking for drugs. He was arrested for “insulting an officer” and imprisoned for three days. Asipstu is an independent Belarusian journalist who was also arrested for allegedly “urinating in a public place.”
29 Mar 2011 | Azerbaijan News, Index Index, minipost, News
Eminent opposition journalist Seymur Haziyev was abducted and beaten on Saturday night (26 March). He was attacked by six masked men and tortured for two hours. The contents of his laptop were scrutinised and his two telephones were taken from him. He claims that he was told to be “as intelligent and quiet as the others”. Mehman Aliyev, the head of news agency Turan, has remarked that: “When a society wakes up, the first in the firing line are the journalists”.
25 Mar 2011 | Index Index, minipost
Reporter Sergei Topol was beaten around the head on Wednesday as he left his home in Moscow, leaving him hospitalised. Topol published a series of articles in 2008 in which he alleged that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was going to leave his wife for a 27-year-old Olympic champion gymnast. Putin denied the claims at the time, and told journalists to keep their “snotty noses” out of his private life. Topol’s assailant is unknown and police have declined to comment on the motive.
17 Mar 2011 | Index Index, minipost
The board president of a Honduran radio station was shot in the leg on 13 March by two people who disagreed with his editorial policies. He was hospitalised but his condition has been described as “stable”. Franklin Melendez is the president of the board of community radio station La Voz de Zacate Grande, which has been targeted for supporting local peasant groups in a land dispute. It is claimed that the identity of his attackers is known, but neither the police or the judicial authorities have taken any action in response. The police asked the station “not to make a fuss”.
