March 2006

New York, March 31, 2006—Authorities in the southern republic of Dagestan have interrogated U.S. journalist Kelly McEvers in four prolonged sessions this week, confiscated her possessions, and instructed her not to leave the region, she told the Committee to Protect Journalists in a telephone interview today.

Police officers first detained McEvers at 4 p.m. Wednesday in the northeastern Dagestani city of Khasavyurt, she said. McEvers said she was taken to the Khasavyurt Interior Ministry headquarters, where police officers and Federal Security Service (FSB) agents questioned her for 10 hours about her research on terrorism in Dagestan. They confiscated a camera, dictaphone, computer disks and notebooks, she said. She was released at 4 a.m. Thursday morning.

Bangkok, March 31, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the harassment and intimidation by pro-government protestors of the Thai-language daily newspaper Kom Chad Luek. As many as 3,000 pro-government protestors staged demonstrations beginning Tuesday in front of the newspaper’s offices, demanding that the newspaper’s editors apologize for an article that made what they considered to be an inappropriate reference to the country’s monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

New York, March 31, 2006—A Hong Kong legislator and a representative for the family of jailed Chinese journalist Shi Tao filed a privacy complaint Thursday against U.S. Internet giant Yahoo for its role in the imprisonment, according to news reports. The family is also considering legal action against the company in Hong Kong or the United States, said Zhang Yu, a spokesman for the family

New York, March 31, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply disturbed by the mistreatment and harassment of imprisoned Tunisian writer and human rights lawyer Muhamed Abbou.

Abbou was so weak that he could not stand up during a brief visit with family members on Thursday, his wife, Samia, said in an interview with CPJ. “He told us that he was seriously ill and he had been denied proper medical care,” she said. “He said he is forced to share a cell with four criminal thugs who he believes have been instructed by the prison administration to harass him day and night.”

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the detention since early Tuesday of two senior journalists for the private newspaper The Independent, whose offices were also sealed off by security forces. Editor Musa Saidykhan and General Manager Madi Ceesay, who is also secretary-general of the Gambia Press Union, have now been in custody for more than three days without being informed of the reasons, according to CPJ sources. Gambian law normally requires that they be brought before a court within a three-day period, a local lawyer confirmed.

MARCH 8, 2006
Posted March 31, 2006

Primera Plana
HARRASSED

Armed men seized 18,000 copies of the monthly newspaper Primera Plana in the northwestern city of Pereira after the publication of a report on government corruption.

New York, March 30, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by the detention since early Tuesday of two senior journalists for The Independent private newspaper, whose offices were sealed off by security forces. Police allowed Editor Musa Saidykhan and General Manager Madi Ceesay, who is also secretary-general of the Gambia Press Union, to talk to visitors for the first time today.

New York, March 30, 2006—Nearly two months after Paraguayan radio reporter Enrique Galeano vanished, the Committee to Protect Journalists today placed the journalist on its missing list and renewed its call for the authorities to thoroughly investigate the journalist’s fate.

Galeano, also known as “El Pirulito,” has been missing since February 4, when he disappeared near Yby Yaú, a small town in the northern Concepción province. Galeano hosts a morning news and music show on Radio Azotey in the city of Horqueta, and he is the editor of the monthly Alo vecino.

New York, March 30, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes today's release of Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter on assignment for The Christian Science Monitor who had been held captive in Iraq for nearly three months. Carroll was freed at mid-day in Baghdad. She was reported in good health and told reporters that she was treated well and was not harmed.

New York, March 30, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists supports calls by Wu Na for the release of her brother Wu Hao, a documentary filmmaker and blogger detained by police in Beijing on February 22. Nina Wu, as she is also known, did not publicize the detention until March 22, when her family became convinced that authorities would not release him.

In her own blog in Chinese, posted today at http://spaces.msn.com/wuhaofamily/, Nina Wu criticizes the police for not giving the family even the most basic information about her brother. The blog, an unusual challenge to authorities, also said that officials had reneged on a promise to set a date for Wu’s release.

New York, March 30, 2006—The Turkmen service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has lost contact with correspondents Meter Khommadov and Dzhumadurdy Ovezov for a second time this month, the broadcaster said today. Khommadov gave an interview to the service on March 23, describing the conditions of his and Ovezov’s March 7 arrest and 10-day prison stay. The next day, RFE/RL lost contact with both correspondents, Rozynazar Khoudaiberdiev of the RFE/RL Turkmen service in Prague told CPJ in a telephone interview.

New York, March 28, 2006—Plainclothes Gambian security agents today sealed the offices of the twice-weekly newspaper The Independent and arrested staffers found on the premises, local journalists told the Committee to Protect Journalists. Most of the staff members were released after brief questioning, but Editor Musa Saidykhan and General Manager Madi Ceesay remained in custody at the end of the day. Police had arrested Saidykhan at his home overnight. Authorities have given no explanation, CPJ sources said.

New York, March 28, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about Maldivian authorities’ criminal prosecution of Abdullah Saeed, a reporter with the opposition Minivan Daily newspaper. The journalist, also known as Fahala, was sentenced on Sunday to two months in jail for refusing a urine test when he was arrested last October.

Saeed still faces the more serious charge of possessing more than one gram of an opiate, which could carry a life sentence. Colleagues have insisted that charge was manufactured to silence a critical journalist and that any drugs were planted by police. They say Saeed refused to submit to the urine test because he feared it would be tampered with. Saeed was convicted on a drug charge once before, in 2000, but was pardoned three years later.

New York, March 28, 2006—More than two dozen domestic and foreign journalists are now jailed in Belarus in connection with a tumultuous presidential campaign that included a deeply flawed March 19 vote and ensuing antigovernment protests, according to records compiled by the Belarusian Association of Journalists and other local press groups.

On Monday, Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay called on Belarusian authorities to immediately release Frederick Lavoie, a reporter for the Montreal-based newspaper La Presse, who was arrested while covering a protest in October Square on Friday and sentenced to 15 days in jail. “Effective immediately, the government of Canada will limit its official relations with Belarusian authorities,” MacKay said during a meeting with the Belarusian ambassador to Canada, Nina Mazai.

New York, March 28, 2006—Authorities in the breakaway region of Abkhazia released three filmmakers on Saturday after detaining them for three weeks on charges of entering the self-declared republic illegally, according to local and international press reports.

Abkhazian authorities handed over journalists Tea Sharia, Georgii Sokhadze and Teimuraza Eliava to Georgian authorities at a bridge over the Inguri River, which forms part of the administrative boundary between Abkhazia and the rest of Georgia. Sergey Bagapsh, the self-declared president of the Abkhazia, ordered the journalists released following negotiations with Georgian presidential adviser Irakli Alasania.

New York, March 27, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about the use of pepper spray by U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents against journalists covering an FBI raid last month in San Juan, Puerto Rico. U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan has scheduled a briefing on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., on this and other recent incidents involving law enforcement officials in Puerto Rico.

The incident occurred February 10 at a San Juan condominium, where FBI agents executed a search warrant related to an investigation of a Puerto Rican separatist group. A group of journalists arrived at the building during the raid. The FBI said in a statement that agents established a crime scene perimeter at the front gate and the parking lot entrance to the condominium complex. "Although members of the general public and media were repeatedly told not to cross the perimeter throughout the day, residents were allowed to enter and exit the building," the FBI said in its statement.

New York, March 27, 2006—A prominent Russian journalist was detained and beaten by police, another Russian journalist was expelled, and at least six Belarusian and international journalists were handed jail sentences as Belarusian authorities continued to crack down on journalists covering the aftermath of the flawed March 19 presidential vote.

Five plainclothes officers pushed Pavel Sheremet, journalist for the Russian Channel One television network, into a van as he was walking along a Minsk street at around 1 p.m. Saturday, according to press reports. Police handcuffed, blindfolded, and beat the journalist, Sheremet told the Committee to Protect Journalists and news organizations. Sheremet, an ethnic Belarusian who lives in Russia, was visiting relatives in Minsk at the time and was not covering the antigovernment protests in October Square, according to local press reports.

New York, March 27, 2006 – The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s decision to file criminal defamation charges against four Thai newspapers related to their news coverage of recent rallies staged against his government.

Thaksin’s personal lawyer filed criminal complaints Thursday against the Manager Daily, Krungthep Tooragit, Post Today, and the Thai Post. The complaints noted that the four newspapers had published the speeches of antigovernment protestors who, among other things, accused Thaksin’s government of selling national assets to foreigners.

New York, N.Y., March 27, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the 18-month prison sentence handed down against an Austrian writer for defaming local officials in Iraq’s semiautonomous northern Kurdistan region.

A court in the Iraqi city of Arbil sentenced Kamal Karim, whose name is also given as Kamal Sayid Qadir, on Sunday for articles that appeared on Kurdistanpost, an independent Kurdish news Web site. The articles criticized the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and its leader Masoud Barzani, whom the journalist accused of corruption and abuse of power. Barzani is also president of the Kurdistan region.

MARCH 25, 2006
Posted April 19, 2006

Aboubacar Mchangama, L’Archipel
IMPRISONED, LEGAL ACTION

Mchangama, director of the independent weekly L’Archipel, was detained by paramilitary police, or gendarmes, for two days in the capital, Moroni, over an article detailing discontent among army officers. He was charged with “divulging military secrets,” according to the Panapress news agency.

Security guards at the Odesaoblenergo energy company in the southern city of Odessa attacked two journalists covering a protest against local power outages, according to local and international press reports.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the March 11 abduction and assault of a Yemeni journalist who was warned to stop writing his weekly column because it offended state security forces. A recent series of attacks against journalists, coupled with the government's indifference, is contributing to an ever more repressive climate for the press.

New York, March 24, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by threats against Peruvian radio journalist Rory Huaney Rodríguez in the city of Yungay, in the northern Áncash province. Huaney said the threats stem from his coverage of the trial of a former local mayor charged in the 2004 murder of journalist Antonio de la Torre Echeandía.

In an interview with CPJ, Huaney said the situation escalated Saturday evening. He alleged that the son of former Yungay mayor Amaro León beat and kicked him. The ex-mayor’s son, Jean Carlo León Martínez, warned Huaney to stop talking about his father or he would be killed, the reporter told CPJ. The elder León was convicted in December 2005 of killing radio reporter De la Torre Echeandía.

New York, March 24, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes U.S. officials’ pledge this week to begin prompt, high-level reviews of cases in which journalists are detained by troops in Iraq. CPJ documented seven cases in 2005 alone in which U.S. forces detained Iraqi journalists for periods of many weeks or months without charge or due process.

New York, March 24, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Chinese authorities to release New York Times researcher Zhao Yan now that the charge of revealing state secrets has been dropped against him. Zhao’s defense lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said prosecutors have not responded to two requests to release him after the charge was dropped on March 17, according to news reports.

CPJ rejects claims made on Thursday by Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang at a press briefing that, “Chinese judicial authorities are handling this case in accordance with law.” CPJ also calls on Qin to clarify his remarks about a timeframe for Zhao’s release. “From what I have learned,” Qin said when asked about a release date, “the actual situation is not like what you are talking about.”

New York, March 24, 2006—Riot police in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, detained at least nine journalists as they stormed an encampment of 200 or more opposition protesters in October Square early today, according to local and international press reports. Police barred other journalists from filming or taking pictures of the assault, which led to the arrests of the activists and ended an around-the-clock rally that began Sunday evening in protest of the flawed presidential election that returned Aleksandr Lukashenko to a third term.

New York, March 23, 2006—One year after Philippine columnist Marlene Garcia-Esperat was gunned down in her home in Tacurong, lawyers for her family are expected to ask a judge to reinstate murder charges against two regional agriculture officials suspected of ordering the killing. The Committee to Protect Journalists urges the court to give utmost consideration to the request and to ensure that all those responsible for the murder are charged and brought to justice.

Your Excellency: I am writing to strongly protest Your Excellency's recent promulgation of a draconian decree further restricting freedom of expression, including sharp new limits on discussion of the conflict that ravaged Algeria in the 1990s.

New York, March 22, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned the detention and prosecution of a Kurdish journalist, who was seized by Kurdish security forces in northern Iraq. On March 17, security forces affiliated with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) arrested Hawez Hawezi, a 31-year-old high school teacher who also writes for the independent Kurdish weekly Hawlati, at his home in Koya, near the city of Arbil, the newspaper’s managing editor Peshwaz Faizulla told CPJ.

New York, March 22, 2006—The trial of an Iraqi cameraman working for CBS News has been put off until next month, The Associated Press reported. Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein was scheduled to appear in court today, but an Iraqi judge postponed the trial until April 5, CBS News bureau chief in Baghdad, Larry Doyle, told the AP.

U.S. military authorities have been holding Hussein in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad since his arrest last April in the northern city of Mosul. Throughout, U.S. officials have refused to make public any charges or evidence against.

New York, March 22, 2006—An Ethiopian court today granted a state prosecutor’s request to drop charges of treason against five Voice of America journalists and another radio journalist being tried in absentia.

“We welcome the dropping of these ridiculous charges against VOA staff,” said Ann Cooper, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “But they should never have been charged in the first place. We call on the government to release all journalists imprisoned for their work in Ethiopia immediately.”

New York, March 22, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists called today for the release of documentary filmmaker and blogger Wu Hao whose detention has only now been made public. Wu was detained on February 22 in Beijing, apparently without charge, according to his friends in China and the United States.

“Wu Hao must be released immediately,” said Ann Cooper, CPJ’s executive director. “His detention is one more example of China’s desperate attempt to restrain journalists who seek legitimately to explore and understand the dynamics of its rapidly changing society.”

New York, March 21, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalist mourns the death of Colombian radio commentator Gustavo Rojas Gabalo, who died Monday of injuries he suffered in a February 4 shooting outside a local supermarket in the northwestern city of Montería, Córdoba province.

Rojas, known as “El Gaba,” died in the Salucoop Clinic in Medellín, the local press reported. His daughter, Erly Rojas, told CPJ that the journalist had been moved to Medellín over the weekend to get specialized medical attention. He had undergone surgery several times in Montería, according to the local press freedom group Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP).

MARCH 10, 2006
Posted March 21, 2006

Peter Nimely Toby, The Analyst
ATTACKED, THREATENED

Armed and masked men assaulted and threatened Toby, sports editor for the independent newspaper The Analyst in the capital, Monrovia, the newspaper reported. The men jumped out of a black jeep, beat Toby with guns, and threatened him with death.

MARCH 11, 2006
Posted March 21, 2006

Matongo Maumbi, Radio Chikuni
Jyde Hamoonga, Radio Chikuni
HARASSED, LEGAL ACTION

Maumbi and Hamoonga, two journalists working for Radio Chikuni, a community station in the southern district of Monze, were arrested and charged with publishing “false news with intent to cause fear and alarm to the public.” The journalists were detained overnight by police and released on bond, according to the local chapter of the Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA).

New York, March 21, 2006—An Iraqi cameraman held by U.S. forces for nearly a year without charge will stand trial in Baghdad on Wednesday, CBS News and a U.S. military spokesman said late today. Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, a freelance cameraman working for CBS News, will be prosecuted at the Central Criminal Court of Iraq at 9 a.m., Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry told CPJ from Iraq. Curry would not elaborate on the charges against Hussein.

New York, March 21, 2006—Unidentified assailants beat a reporter for the Czech daily Mlada Fronta Dnes as he was completing coverage of a post-election opposition rally in downtown Minsk Sunday night, The Associated Press reported. The attackers broke Jan Rybar’s nose, leaving him with a mild concussion and bruises, and took his laptop computer and satellite phone, which he had used to file his report from the rally. The attackers took no money, the AP said.

New York, March 20, 2006—Authorities have released two journalists working for the Turkmen service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) after arresting them on spurious charges of hooliganism, according to international press reports. RFE/RL officials in Prague issued a statement saying that the two journalists—Meret Khommadov and Dzhumadurdy Ovezov—were freed on Thursday only after signing documents agreeing not to work for the U.S. government-funded broadcaster.

New York, March 20, 2006—Belarusian authorities muzzled independent journalists in the final hours of the presidential campaign—and beyond—as President Aleksandr Lukashenko won a third term in balloting on Sunday that international observers said fell short of democratic standards.

Authorities arrested three Belarusian editors without explanation and barred at least four Russian journalists from covering the vote, according to local and international press reports. Independent news Web sites reported technical difficulties all weekend. And today, press reports said, border police seized news footage from a Ukrainian television crew.

New York, March 20, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release from prison of prominent Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji, freed on Friday after six years behind bars, but the organization calls on authorities to release all Iranian journalists jailed for their work. At least nine journalists are now jailed in Iran, CPJ research shows.

Your Majesty: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by evidence that Moroccan authorities played a role in organizing demonstrations against the magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire for publishing a photograph of a French newspaper showing some of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. These state-orchestrated protests placed the lives of the entire staff of the Casablanca-based weekly at risk, yet the government has failed to launch a credible investigation or call those responsible to account.

New York, March 17, 2006—Murder has overtaken crossfire and other acts of war as the leading cause of work-related deaths among journalists and media support workers in Iraq, and local journalists are far and away the most vulnerable to attack, a new analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists has found. CPJ research, compiled for the third anniversary of the conflict, shows that 67 journalists and 24 media support workers have been killed since the war began on March 20, 2003, making it the deadliest conflict for the press in recent history.

New York, March 17, 2006— The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes China’s decision today to drop charges of revealing state secrets against jailed New York Times researcher Zhao Yan. The decision by the prosecutor’s office was announced by Zhao’s lawyer, Mo Shaoping, in Beijing.

Zhao was detained in September 2004 after The New York Times printed an article correctly predicting the retirement of former president Jiang Zemin from his post on the Central Military Commission. Zhao’s New York Times colleagues denied that he provided them with state secrets. Zhao was also indicted on a lesser charge of fraud.

New York, March 17, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores the ongoing government crackdown on independent media in Belarus ahead of a presidential election Sunday. Authorities barred two Polish journalists from entering the country to cover the poll, seized the print-run of an opposition newspaper, and pressured a cable TV operator to drop a Russian broadcaster, media reported.

President Aleksandr Lukashenko has moved aggressively against the media to curb coverage of candidates challenging his bid for a third term in office.

CPJ Update Committee to Protect Journalists March 17, 2006

In meeting with CPJ, Colombian president vows support for beleaguered provincial press

New York, March 16, 2006—The Foreign Ministry has invoked restrictive new regulations to reprimand three correspondents working for the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, escalating pressure on the few remaining local journalists working for foreign media, according to international press reports.

On Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry revoked the accreditation of Deutsche Welle correspondent Obid Shabanov for filing an allegedly “inaccurate” news report in January about 30 people who froze to death after their bus broke down in the desert. The Foreign Ministry claimed the event never happened.

New York, March 16, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the latest government crackdown against independent journalists in the days before Sunday’s presidential election. Police arrested at least four journalists this week, and local courts handed them sentences of five to 10 days in jail on charges of hooliganism.

Andrei Pochobut, editor of the magazine Magazyn Polski na Uchodzstwie, and Andrei Pisalnik, editor of the newspaper Glos Znad Niemna na Uchodzstwie, were arrested in the western city of Grodno. The Polish-language publications are distributed to the country’s ethnic Polish minority. Pochobut was arrested on Monday under unclear circumstances and charged with petty hooliganism; he was sentenced the next day to 10 days in jail. Pisalnik was arrested, charged with hooliganism, and sentenced to five days in prison—all on Wednesday. He was accused of “swearing in public at a bus stop,” according to CPJ sources and local press reports.

New York, March 16, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern today about the health of two independent journalists on hunger strike in Cuba, one of them in prison.

Guillermo Fariñas, director of the independent news agency Cubacán Press, has refused food for 45 days to protest government restrictions on journalists’ access to the Internet, and is in intensive care. Jailed journalist Juan Carlos Herrera of the independent news agency Agencia de Prensa Libre Oriental has gone without food for 13 days.

MARCH 10, 2006

Irina Ovsy, Sotsialisticheskaya Kharkovshchina
ATTACKED

Two unidentified men attacked Ovsy, editor of Sotsialisticheskaya Kharkovshchina, weekly newspaper of the For Union political coalition, at the entrance to her apartment building, according to local press reports. Ovsy was leaving for work at around 10 a.m. when the assailants pushed her against a wall, told her to stop publishing the newspaper, and threatened to hurt the editor and her family.

New York, March 15, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the Uzbek government’s tightening of controls over local and foreign journalists working for foreign state-funded media. The cabinet approved regulations February 24 giving the Foreign Ministry wide discretion to issue formal warnings to foreign correspondents, revoke their accreditation and visas, and expel them. The Uzbek press reported the decision on March 7.

Bogotá, Colombia, March 15, 2006--Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Vélez today expressed support for the work of provincial journalists who report under threat of violence and said that any official who impedes their work "is committing a crime against democracy."

Uribe issued the statement at the urging of a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists, which met with the president this morning at his campaign headquarters in Bogotá to outline its concerns about the risks facing the Colombian press. Uribe is seeking a second term as president in elections scheduled for May 28.

New York, March 15, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is relieved that Palestinian kidnappers have released French and South Korean journalists abducted in Gaza.

Caroline Laurent, a reporter for the French women’s weekly ELLE, Alfred Yaghobzadeh, a photographer from the photo agency SIPA, and Yong Tae-young, a correspondent for South Korea’s public broadcaster KBS, were taken at the Al-Dira hotel in Gaza by gunmen on Tuesday. All three were released unharmed 22 hours later, according to news reports.

New York, March 15, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists rejects Chinese government charges of subverting state power brought against imprisoned Internet journalist Li Jianping.

Li has been detained in Zibo, a city in northeastern China’s Shandong Province, since May 27, 2005. The latest charges were brought on March 9, and recently made public by Li’s wife, Xu Hui. Li was originally arrested on suspicion of defamation.

New York, March 15, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the acquittal of media activist Supinya Klangnarong and four journalists from the Thai-language daily Thai Post on criminal defamation charges brought by telecommunications giant Shin Corp.

The Bangkok Criminal Court dismissed the charges on Tuesday in a move widely hailed as a victory for press freedom, which has come under assault from Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who founded Shin Corp.

Nairobi, Kenya, March 14, 2006—Deep political divisions in Ethiopia have fueled the massive, months-long crackdown on the private press in that country, gutting the print media, promoting rampant self-censorship, and resulting in the imprisonment of more than a dozen journalists on charges that could bring the death penalty, the Committee to Protect Journalists found during a one-week visit to the country that ended on Monday.

Nairobi, Kenya, March 14, 2006—Deep political divisions in Ethiopia have fueled the massive, months-long crackdown on the private press in that country, gutting the print media, promoting rampant self-censorship, and resulting in the imprisonment of more than a dozen journalists on charges that could bring the death penalty, the Committee to Protect Journalists found during a one-week visit to the country that ended on Monday.

February 1, 2006
Posted March 14, 2006

Jimmy Uhuru, Unity FM
Paul Odom Aryam, Unity FM
Joe Okello, Unity FM
HARASSED

Police in the northern town of Lira raided the private radio station Unity FM and arrested three journalists working for the station. Owner Uhuru, News Editor Aryam, and news reader Okello were released the same day, but police threatened to charge them with incitement and broadcasting “false news,” Uhuru told CPJ.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is troubled by the cascade of criminal cases filed against newspaper directors who published lists of supposed "secret homosexuals" in January and February. While readers may have been offended by publication of the lists in La Météo, L'Anecdote, and Le Soleil d'Afrique, the use of repressive criminal defamation and insult laws in this matter endangers press freedom in Cameroon.

New York, March 14, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by reports that Palestinian gunmen abducted journalists and other foreigners in Gaza City today. A wave of violence erupted in Gaza and elsewhere in the West Bank, after Israeli forces laid siege to a Jericho prison to arrest militants believed responsible for the 2001 assassination of an Israeli minister.

CPJ sources said as many as four South Korean and French journalists were abducted from Gaza’s Dira hotel. Armed kidnappers stormed the hotel this afternoon, according to news reports, which said one gunman was killed in a confrontation with Palestinian police.

New York, March 14, 2006—Muhsin Khudhair, editor of the news magazine Alef Ba, was killed by unidentified gunmen near his home in Baghdad Monday night, becoming the third journalist killed in Iraq in the last week, Reuters and Agence France-Presse reported. The shooting took place just hours after Khudair attended a meeting of the Iraqi Journalists Union, which discussed the targeting of local journalists in Iraq, Reuters said.

New York, March 14, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the closure of an independent radio station in Uganda which aired a show critical of the military and a ruling party candidate in last month’s municipal elections. Police in the northern town of Gulu shuttered Choice FM on Monday, the station’s news editor Sam Lawino told CPJ Tuesday.

Police showed the station a letter from the Ugandan Broadcasting Council, a regulatory body in the capital, Kampala, ordering a suspension of broadcasts. The Council said a program on February 28 was “in violation of the minimum broadcasting standards,” citing a section of the Electronic Media Act that bars programs “likely to cause public insecurity or violence.”

New York, March 14, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Belarusian authorities’ escalating harassment of the country’s few independent newspapers as Sunday’s presidential election approaches. Four newspapers based in the capital, Minsk, have been forced to interrupt publication less than a week before the balloting in which incumbent Aleksandr Lukashenko seeks re-election, according to local and international press reports.

New York, March 14, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release on bail of the 16-year-old son of murdered journalist Veronika Cherkasova. Anton Filimonov was freed Monday from the Minsk detention center where he had been held since December 27, local media reported.

Although he was formally charged with forging currency, Filimonov was pressured by investigators to “confess” to killing his mother, according to his grandparents.

New York, March 13, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder of Amjad Hameed, head of programming for Iraq's state television channel Al-Iraqiya. Gunmen apparently affiliated to Al-Qaeda killed Hameed and his driver Anwar Turki in an ambush in Baghdad Saturday. Hameed, 45, had run the station since July.

“We deplore the senseless murder of Amjad Hameed and Anwar Turki and offer our condolences to their families,” CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. “As the third anniversary of the Iraq war approaches, this is yet another reminder of why Iraq remains the most dangerous place for journalists.”

New York, March 10, 2006—Mexican photographer Jaime Arturo Olvera Bravo was shot to death Thursday outside his home in La Piedad in the central state of Michoacán. The special prosecutor for crimes against journalists has opened a preliminary inquiry and will work with state authorities to establish if the murder was related to Olvera’s work. CPJ is also investigating the slaying.

Olvera, a freelance photographer and former correspondent for the Morelia-based daily La Voz de Michoacán, left his home around 8 p.m. with his 5-year-old son. While they were waiting at a bus stop, an unknown assailant approached Olvera and fired at close range, according to local press reports. A bullet struck Olvera in the neck, and he died at the scene. His son was unharmed.

New York, March 10, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a bomb attack on a Venezuelan newspaper and a threat against its editor. Unidentified assailants threw three homemade explosives on Wednesday at the offices of the daily La Región in Los Teques, southwest of Caracas. No one was injured in the attack, which caused minor damage.

The attackers left behind pamphlets threatening La Región’s editor Romel Flores and several Venezuelan journalists, the paper’s news director Armando De Fa told CPJ. The pamphlets said the journalists should be tried and sentenced to death.

New York, March 10, 2006—An editor was sentenced on Wednesday to one year in prison on a charge of publishing “false news” in a 2002 report attributed to the BBC, which claimed that Ethiopia was training rebels in neighboring Eritrea. Abraham Gebrekidan, who edited the now-defunct Amharic-language weekly Politika, was immediately jailed, several local sources told the Committee to Protect Journalists.

New York, March 10, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists today officially placed Pakistani journalist Hayatullah Khan on its list of missing journalists after repeated calls to Pakistani authorities for information about the abducted reporter went unanswered.

Khan was seized by unidentified gunmen in the lawless North Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan on December 5. Some of Khan’s journalist colleagues believe he was taken by the authorities after contradicting the government version of a report on the killing of an al-Qaeda commander.

New York, March 10, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the one-year prison sentence handed down to Egyptian journalist Amira Malash for defamation. On Tuesday, a court in Giza near Cairo convicted Malash, a reporter for the independent weekly Al-Fagr, of defaming Judge Attia Mohammad Awad in an article she wrote in July 2005 alleging that he had taken bribes.

“The sentencing of our colleague Amira Malash spotlights President Mubarak’s complete failure to eliminate criminal penalties in cases of defamation and other press offenses" CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. "Two journalists have been convicted in the past two weeks revealing a continued disregard for freedom of expression in Egypt.”

New York, March 9, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the expulsion today of a Canadian freelance journalist who reported from Uganda for more than two years for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the London-based magazine The Economist, and other outlets.

Blake Lambert told CPJ that authorities at Kampala airport prevented him from re-entering Uganda and put him on a plane to neighboring Kenya. His expulsion follows the Ugandan authorities’ failure to renew Lambert’s media accreditation, on which his residency permit depended. On Saturday, when his accreditation expired, Lambert left Uganda voluntarily for South Africa. He said he had not been told that he could not return.

New York, March 9, 2006—A court in the breakaway region of Abkhazia has sentenced three Georgian filmmakers to three months in prison for espionage and illegally entering the self-declared republic in the northwest Caucasus, according to local and international press reports.

The filmmakers were tried and convicted on Tuesday evening by the Sukhumi City Court and a Georgian lawyer was not allowed to represent them, local media reported.

New York, March 9, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the abduction and attempted murder of a Dominican crime reporter early Wednesday morning. Unidentified assailants seized Roberto Sandoval outside his Santo Domingo home and threatened to kill him, according to news reports and a CPJ source. Sandoval escaped by jumping from a moving vehicle as his attackers fired at him.

The journalist hosts two daily programs in the capital, Santo Domingo: “Tribuna de la Noche” on Radio Comercial, and “Justo a Tiempo” on local cable television. Sandoval often reports on crime and is critical of Dominican law enforcement, colleague Ruddy Germán Pérez told CPJ.

New York, March 9, 2006—Two correspondents for the Turkmen service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty are being held incommunicado after being arrested on Tuesday, and the U.S. government-funded broadcaster said today it has lost contact with its entire network of correspondents in the country. The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply alarmed by the developments and called on the Turkmen government to disclose details of the arrests, allow restoration of contact with RFE/RL journalists, and halt its intimidation of the broadcaster’s reporters.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 9, 2006—Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, facing international criticism for cracking down on the press, pledged today that his government would give journalists charged with treason and genocide “their day in court” and a fair and proper trial.

In a two-hour meeting with a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists, the prime minister also promised that his government would review the prosecution of other journalists facing longstanding charges.

New York, March 9, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the killing of presenter Munsuf Abdallah al-Khaldi of the Iraqi television station Baghdad TV which has been threatened and shelled by insurgents.

Unidentified gunmen shot al-Khaldi, 35, as he was driving from Baghdad on Tuesday with three passengers to interview poets in the northern city of Mosul for his program, Baghdad TV deputy director Thaer Ahmad said. The assailants stopped the car and fired three bullets into al-Khaldi. One passenger was also killed and the other two passengers injured. Al-Khaldi presented an educational and cultural show focusing on Middle Eastern poetry.

JANUARY 15, 2006
Posted: March 8, 2006

Bonaventure Bizumuremyi, Umuco
ATTACKED

Four unidentified intruders carrying clubs and knives came to the Kigali home of Bizumuremyi, editor of one of Rwanda’s few independent newspapers, Umuco. CPJ sources said the intruders broke the door, awakening neighbors who intervened before the intruders could get inside. Bizumuremyi, who had been asleep inside, summoned police. Police said they would investigate, according to the local human rights organization Ligue des Grands Lacs.

MARCH 8, 2006
Posted March 31, 2006

Primera Plana
HARRASSED

Armed men seized 18,000 copies of the monthly newspaper Primera Plana in the northwestern city of Pereira after the publication of a report on government corruption.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by the continued use of criminal statutes to jail Congolese journalists for reporting on allegations of corruption and other violations. Jean Pierre Phambu Lutette, managing director of the small private newspaper La Tolérance, was arrested on Friday on charges of insulting a local government official and "inciting tribal hatred," according to the local press freedom organization Journaliste en Danger (JED). He has since been transferred to the central prison in the capital, Kinshasa, where he joins publishers Jean-Louis Ngalamulume, in jail since January 27, and Patrice Booto, behind bars since November 2, 2005.

New York, March 7, 2006—Three unidentified men abducted a reporter for the Azerbaijani opposition newspaper Azadlyg on Sunday night, beating him, breaking some of his fingers, and slashing him, according to local and international press reports.

The attack on Fikret Huseinli was likely related to his work, Azadlyg Editor-in-Chief Ganimat Zahidov told reporters at a press conference on Monday. Huseinli recently received several anonymous telephone threats after writing articles in the Baku newspaper detailing alleged bribe-taking among senior government officials and criminal activities involving wealthy business people, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported.

New York, March 7, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Philippine authorities' decision to file charges of inciting sedition against the publisher and two columnists of the Manila-based Daily Tribune newspaper.

The government filed the charges against Publisher Ninez Cacho-Olivares and columnists Ike Seneres and Herman Tiu-Laurel on Friday, just three hours after President Gloria Arroyo lifted a weeklong state of emergency.

New York, March 7, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Nepalese authorities’ detention of journalist Jay Gupta, editor and publisher of the Kathmandu-based Uptyaka Daily and the weekly Dishanirdesh. Police arrested Gupta on Friday after his publications reported that a bomb went off near a royal vacation retreat that King Gyanendra and his wife were visiting in the central town of Pokhara, local journalists told CPJ.

New York, March 7, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is very troubled by the recent harassment of journalists at the independent radio station Choice FM in the town of Gulu, in Uganda's war-scarred north. Police accused the station of being a security threat after a talk show last Wednesday featuring opposition and ruling party candidates in Ugandan municipal elections, according to local journalists.

During the broadcast, the ruling party candidate and incumbent for the Gulu district seat, Walter Ochora Odoch, traded barbs with opposition members and opponent Norbert Mao, who went on to win election. The opposition candidates harshly criticized local civilian and military authorities for alleged corruption and mistreatment of detainees, according to local journalists.

New York, March 7, 2006—Authorities in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia today charged three journalists with entering the self-declared republic illegally to shoot a documentary film, local and international media reported.

Journalists Tea Sharia, Georgii Sokhadze and Teimuraza Eliava were arrested March 1 in Abkhazia, a region along the Black Sea in the northwest Caucasus.

They entered Abkhazia, which declared independence after a 1992-93 war with Georgia, to make a film about churches and monasteries in cooperation with the Georgian Orthodox Church. They were arrested while filming at Bedia monastery in the Ochamchiri region. Sharia and Sokhadze are Georgian citizens and Eliava is a Ukrainian citizen originally from Georgia.

New York, March 6, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists called on the Philippine authorities today to work for the release of kidnapped radio commentator Joey Estriber.

Four unidentified men seized Estriber on March 3 in Baler, the capital of Aurora province, 125 miles (200 kilometers) northeast of Manila, local media reported. Estriber cried out for help as he was bundled into a waiting van in the center of town. Estriber, 37, anchors a radio news program on radio station DZJO in Baler and is also works with non-governmental organizations campaigning against large-scale mining and illegal logging in the province.

New York, March 6, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the arrest today on fraud charges of a Venezuelan journalist known for his criticism of state authorities. Gustavo Azócar Alcalá was arrested in the western state of Táchira minutes after finishing a daily show he hosts on the San Cristóbal-based TV station Televisora del Táchira, a station spokesperson told CPJ. Azócar is also the Táchira correspondent for the Caracas-based daily El Universal.

New York, March 6, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned escalating media repression in Belarus ahead of March 19 presidential elections. Iosef Serdiyevich, editor-in-chief of the opposition newspaper Narodnaya Volya, announced at a press conference today that police officers had confiscated 250,000 copies of a special election edition of the newspaper, according to local and international press reports.

New York, March 3, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Tuesday’s criminal defamation conviction of Mexican journalist Isabel Arvide for a 2001 article alleging links between state officials and organized crime.

Judge Octavio Rodríguez Gaytán, of the Second Penal Court in the state of Chihuahua, sentenced Arvide to one year in prison and ordered her to pay a fine of 200,000 pesos (U$19,000) in damages, the Mexican press said. The judge suspended the prison term and and ruled that damages would be covered by bail Arvide posted when she was first detained, according to press reports. Arvide must report monthly to state security officials during the one-year term.

New York, March 3, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the Vietnamese authorities’ recent harassment of two well-known Internet writers, Nguyen Khac Toan and Do Nam Hai.

Plainclothes officers on Wednesday detained the two writers at a public Internet café and took pictures of the sites they were viewing, which included the banned Web site of the Free Vietnam Alliance democracy group, according to a Deutsche Presse-Agentur report, which quoted Toan.

New York, March 3, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by sedition charges pending against Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of the tabloid weekly Blitz. Choudhury, who spent 17 months in jail before his release on bail in May 2005, is due to be tried in a Dhaka court next week.

Choudhury told CPJ he believes the prosecution is related to his journalistic work advocating improved relations between Israel and Muslim countries and promoting interfaith dialogue. His lawyer was informed on Wednesday that Dhaka’s Metropolitan Sessions Judge’s Court will hold a first hearing next week, Choudhury said. The charge of sedition can result in the death penalty.

New York, March 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by death threats against a reporter for the Colombian newspaper Vanguardia Liberal which says it is also the target of government surveillance.

Jenny Manrique said she fled the city of Bucaramanga, in the western province of Santander, in January after receiving death threats for reporting on abuses by right-wing paramilitary forces. She had asked CPJ to keep her flight secret for fear of reprisal. However, after Vanguardia Liberal published allegations of surveillance and phone tapping by state security agents last week she decided to go public.

New York, March 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by criminal charges filed against the daily Lebanese newspaper Al-Mustaqbal, its editor-in-chief, and a staff reporter for defaming President Emile Lahoud.

The charges were brought by Beirut prosecutor Joseph Me’mari on Tuesday, four days after Al-Mustaqbal published an interview with former Lebanese ambassador to France and former army intelligence chief Johnny Abdo, who criticized Lahoud’s performance. According to The Daily Star, Abdo was quoted as saying that “under Lahoud’s mandate, the Presidential Palace was turned into an unsuitable place to hold dialogue, and Lahoud’s presence violates the constitution, because the constitution says the president is the symbol of unity.”

New York, March 2, 2006—A judge in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, has convicted Boyuk Millat Editor-in-Chief Samir Adygozalov of criminal libel and insult and sentenced him to one year in prison, according to local press reports.

Adygozalov was immediately taken into custody after the verdict was read in Nizami District Court on February 23. The editor was convicted in connection with a September 15 article headlined “Rector-Armenian,” which accused the rector of Baku State University, Abel Magarramov, of being an ethnic Armenian and improperly using university funds to support the Armenian diaspora, according to the Baku newspaper Zerkalo. Magarramov won a seat in parliament in November 2005.

New York, March 2, 2006—Police today turned on journalists in Belarus trying to cover an attack by plainclothes police officers on an opposition candidate in March 19 presidential elections. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the assault.

Aleksandr Kozulin, one of three candidates challenging president Aleksandr Lukashenko, was beaten and detained by police in the capital Minsk when he tried to enter a meeting to hear Lukashenko speak, local and international news organizations reported. Kozulin was released after several hours in custody.

TEMPLATE

New York, March 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by death threats against a reporter for the Colombian newspaper Vanguardia Liberal which says it is also the target of government surveillance.

Jenny Manrique said she fled the city of Bucaramanga, in the western province of Santander, in January after receiving death threats for reporting on abuses by right-wing paramilitary forces. She had asked CPJ to keep her flight secret for fear of reprisal. However, after Vanguardia Liberal published allegations of surveillance and phone tapping by state security agents last week she decided to go public.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely concerned by a recent string of attacks on the media in Kenya, where your Excellency promised to strengthen press freedom and democratic institutions. Early this morning, police raided Kenya's oldest newspaper, the Standard, and a television station owned by the Standard Group, temporarily disabling both media outlets. The raids are particularly troubling in light of events over the past two weeks, when police detained three journalists from the Standard's weekend edition, charging them with publishing "alarming" statements, and raided two tabloid newspapers, detaining several journalists and issuing arrest warrants for four more.

New York, March 1, 2006—One year after the founder and editor of the opposition weekly Monitor was slain in the entrance of his apartment building in Baku, Azerbaijan, no suspects are in custody and many colleagues and relatives believe the government's investigation is on the wrong track. The Committee to Protect Journalists called today for the government to renew its investigation by pursuing all leads in the March 2, 2005, murder of Elmar Huseynov.

New York, March 1, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Paraguayan authorities to fully investigate an attack against newspaper reporter Juan Augusto Roa, whose car was fired on by unidentified gunmen on Monday night near the southern city of Encarnación. The reporter was unharmed.

Roa, a correspondent for the Asunción-based daily ABC Color, told CPJ he was doing research in the city of Mayor Otaño for a story about the environmental effects of Paraguayan paper mills located near the border with Argentina.