January
1 marks the 40th day after the brutal killings of 57 people, including 31 journalists and media workers, in the
Philippine 
Committee to Protect Journalists
December 2009
January
1 marks the 40th day after the brutal killings of 57 people, including 31 journalists and media workers, in the
Philippine 
New
York, December 31, 2009—The
Committee to Protect Journalist extends condolences to the family and colleagues
of Canadian journalist Michelle Lang, who died Wednesday while embedded with
Canadian troops in Lang was working for the Calgary Herald and Canwest News Service when she was killed along with four Canadian soldiers while traveling in a Canadian military convoy. Their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb about two miles (three kilometers) south of the volatile city of
New York, December 30, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a new criminal charge filed against imprisoned Azerbaijani editor Eynulla Fatullayev, a 2009 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award. Based on Fatullayev’s account and the government’s long record of persecuting the editor, CPJ believes the charge to be fabricated.
New York, December 29, 2009—The Iranian government, struggling to silence the many critical voices in the country, has arrested at least 11 journalists since Sunday, including former International Press Freedom Award recipient Mashallah Shamsolvaezin and the prominent writer Emadeddin Baghi. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the arrests and called for the release of all detained journalists, who now number more than 30.
In this video report, Greek freelance journalist Iason Athanasiadis recounts his 2009
imprisonment in
New York, December 28, 2009—A Yemeni reporter is being held without charge after being arrested on Sunday while covering clashes between security forces and separatists in Yemen’s southern province of Dhala, according to local news reports. The arrest is the latest attempt by the government to silence media outlets and journalists covering civil unrest in the southern part of the country.
New York, December 24, 2009—José Alberto Velázquez López, owner of the Mexican newspaper Expresiones de Tulum in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, died late Tuesday after being shot in his car by a gunman aboard a motorcycle, according to local news reports. Mexican authorities must swiftly investigate this crime and bring those responsible to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
We issued the following statement today after Ecuadoran authorities took critical private broadcaster Teleamazonas off the air for three days on Tuesday. In a story aired in May, Teleamazonas reported that natural gas exploitation on Puná Island could force the suspension of fishing for six months...
New York, December 22, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Kazakh authorities today to thoroughly investigate the apparent murder of visiting Kyrgyz journalist Gennady Pavlyuk. Pavlyuk, at left, who is better known by his pen name, Ibragim Rustambek, died in the hospital this morning after falling from an upper-story window of an apartment building in
On December 11, 2009, Ricardo Chávez Aldana, a radio host for the Ciudad Juárez-based Radio Cañón, fled to the
Responding to reports of an apparent suicide bombing at the Press Club building in Peshawar, located in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, the we issued the following statement...
New York, December
21, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Turkish authorities
today to locate the killers of journalist Cihan Hayırsevener and bring them to
justice. Hayırsevener, at left, editor of the local daily newspaper Güney Marmara’da Yaşam, was shot three times in the leg on December
19 while walking to his office in Bandirma, a town 60 miles (100 kilometers)
northeast of New York, December 21, 2009—Mortar shells destroyed the Radio Voice of Democracy building this morning in the Somali capital,
December 2009
News from the Committee to Protect Journalists
New York, December 21, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists announced the addition of three leading journalists to its board of directors today: Rebecca MacKinnon of Global Voices, Ahmed Rashid, journalist and scholar, and María Teresa Ronderos of Semana.com.
New York, December 18, 2009—The decision to jail a blogger and an Internet café owner is an escalation in
The government-appointed agency in charge of
Mohamed Olad Hassan, at left, a reporter for the BBC and The Associated
Press, and chairman of the Somali Foreign Correspondents Association, recounts
his experience covering a deadly ceremony in
New York, December 17, 2009—An unidentified gunman shot and killed Colombian journalist Hárold Humberto Rivas Quevedo in the western Valle del Cauca province on the night of December 15. The Committee to Protect journalists today called on Colombian authorities to investigate the killing and do everything in their power to bring all those responsible to justice.
CPJ staffers blogged around the Web today, touching on various issues from our 2009 census of journalists killed. Deputy Director Robert Mahoney has a piece contextualizing the numbers on The Huffington Post; Washington Representative Frank Smyth blogged for The Hill about the importance of the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act; and Tom Rhodes, CPJ Africa program coordinator, wrote an article for World Focus on the decade-high toll for journalists in Africa.
Full posts are available at: The Huffington Post, The Hill Blog, and World Focus.
Full posts are available at: The Huffington Post, The Hill Blog, and World Focus.
Reports
| Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Colombia, El Salvador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Kenya, Madagascar, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Venezuela
CPJ survey finds at least 68 journalists killed in 2009
New York, December 17, 2009—At least 68 journalists worldwide were killed for their work in 2009, the highest yearly tally ever documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists, the organization said in its year-end analysis. The record toll was driven in large part by the election-related slaughter of more than 30 media workers in the Philippine province of Maguindanao, the deadliest event for the press in CPJ history.
Three journalists, all on assignment for The Guardian, were kidnapped in December 2009 and released after six days, according to the paper. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, an Iraqi, ad two unnamed Afghan journalists had been planning to interview militants in Afghanistan’s mountainous Kunar province near the border with Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province when they were abducted. The Guardian said it did not know if the kidnappers were attached to any specific group.
New York, December 16, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists urges the West Bank-based Palestinian Authorities to release a journalist detained since Monday and the Hamas-led government in Gaza to end harassment of journalists.
New York, December 16, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the detention and beating of several journalists who were attempting to report on clashes this week and last between government forces and protesters in Khartoum and the nearby city of Omdurman. Police detained more than 100 people during the clashes, according to local news reports.
My country’s international airport—as some may not know—has become the scene of the Tunisian regime’s score-settling with its opponents. Opponents are no longer banned from traveling; this is a move to promote the idea that they are “free.” However, if they do travel, they face difficulties at the airport, port, or border crossing in question.
New York, December 15, 2009—Unidentified assailants shot and killed Brazilian media owner and radio host José Givonaldo Vieira on Monday morning in northeastern Pernambuco state, according to local news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists called today on Brazilian authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into Vieira’s killing and to promptly bring to justice all those responsible.
New York, December 15, 2009—The managing editor of a private newspaper in
After receiving reports of at least three defamation lawsuits filed recently against Lukpan Akhmedyarov, a prominent journalist with the independent newspaper Uralskaya Nedelya in Western Kazakhstan, in retaliation for his critical reporting on a state construction company’s illegal work on a gas pipe project, er issued the following statement...
Last week’s cover story in the leading Colombian newsweekly Semana—known for investigations that have shaken the core of the administration of President Alvaro Uribe Vélez—revealed further evidence of illegal
wiretapping of journalists by the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), the country’s national intelligence service. The article, titled “A
handbook for threats,” disclosed outrageous details about the intimidation techniques used by the DAS on journalists it considered dangerous.
New York, December 11, 2009—A Russian police officer who fatally shot an online publisher
in government custody in 2008 was convicted of negligent homicide and sentenced
to two years in a low-security prison settlement today, Reuters
and other news agencies reported. The family of the victim, Magomed
Yevloyev, told CPJ they would appeal the verdict because their own
investigation showed that the officer purposely shot the editor. On Thursday, CPJ’s Senior Southeast Asia Representative
New York, December 11, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about the health and detention conditions of Tunisian journalist Taoufik Ben Brik and the flagrant and recurrent violations of his right to see his wife and lawyers.
We issued the following statement today in response to yesterday’s decision by the Supreme Federal Tribunal, Brazil’s highest court, rejecting an appeal from the daily O Estado de São Paulo and its Web site Estadão in a case of censorship. In July, a regional court barred both outlets from publishing reports on a corruption scandal involving the son of Senator and former Brazilian President José Sarney. O Estado de São Paulo said it will appeal the decision...
Did you miss it? Yesterday was the 61st anniversary of the United Nation General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Barack Obama, as he was leaving for
New York, December 10, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Belarusian authorities to prosecute and convict the perpetrators who made death threats against
New York, December 10, 2009—On the 100th day after the sentencing of journalist J. S. Tissainayagam, the Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to use his constitutional powers to release him from the 20-year prison sentence that was given to him on August 31.
Today marks the 100th day of J.S. Tissainayagam’s 20-year prison term. Tissainayagam, known as Tissa, was convicted of “terrorism” charges for articles documenting human rights abuses by the Sri Lankan military, as well as the difficult conditions faced by Sri Lankans displaced in the nation’s long war. His sentence was a dire warning to other journalists who would dare be critical of the government. They are right to be concerned.
Mobilized and clad in black, a group of Philippine journalists symbolically laid down their notebooks, microphones, and cameras in the street to observe a moment of silence outside Malacañang Palace, the seat of national government in the Philippines.
On the same day that historic protests started by monks in Lhasa began and were to sweep all over Tibet in the subsequent months, Dhondup Wangchen was nearly 3,000 kilometers away in Xian, in China’s Shaanxi province. It was the last day of filming for his documentary film project that sought to give voice to Tibetans in the run-up to the Olympic Games. As was the case throughout China, Xian was caught up in an Olympic fervor. Big red banners were hung all over the city, the Olympic mascots peered from shop windows in unspeakably bright colors. None of this however, seemed to have the slightest connection to Tibet or the discontent of the Tibetan people.
New York, December 9, 2009—Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court ruled today that the prosecution of a man accused in the 2007 murder of Alisher Saipov, editor of the Uzbek-language weekly Siyosat, can proceed, the independent news Web site Ferghana reported. Saipov’s family and colleagues have called the case bogus.
New York, December 9, 2009—Police in
New York, December 9, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists joins in the call to journalists across the world to join the Global Day of Solidarity today to demand justice for the journalists slaughtered in Maguindanao province of the Philippines on November 23.
New York, December 8, 2009—The proposed appointment of four members of a seven-person Argentine media regulatory agency created under a government-sponsored broadcast law raises concerns about its independence, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ will monitor the law’s implementation to ensure that the agency is not subjected to undue political interference.
New York, December 8, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Iranian authorities’ decision on Monday to shut the reformist daily Hayate No. The Press Supervisory Board revoked the license of the Tehran-based daily Hayate No “for working outside the regulations,” according to local news reports, but the agency provided no details of the alleged violations.
Today CPJ released its annual census of imprisoned journalists around the world. Citing 136 journalists jailed for their work around the world, the report brings to the foreground one of the toughest issues CPJ and other advocacy groups grapple with: Advocacy working at its best can make a difference over time and, in some cases, can win the early release of journalists from prison. But when that fails what can be done to for journalists languishing in jail, often in horrifying conditions?
Reports
| Azerbaijan, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, India, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, USA, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen
New York, December 8, 2009—Freelancers now make up nearly 45 percent of all journalists jailed worldwide, a dramatic recent increase that reflects the evolution of the global news business, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. In its annual census of imprisoned journalists, CPJ found a total of 136 reporters, editors, and photojournalists behind bars on December 1, an increase of 11 from the 2008 tally. (Read detailed accounts of each imprisoned journalist.) A massive crackdown in Iran, where 23 journalists are now in jail, fueled the worldwide increase.
David Silva, the husband of abducted reporter María Esther Aguilar Cansimbe, ran his hand roughly across his forehead twice, then held his face, looked down, and said, “Every night it’s the same until 2 or 4 in the morning, waiting for the phone call, listening for the car to stop on the street. Then if one does, I’m sure it’s her coming home. But it never is.”
We
are all stuck in the middle of nowhere. Millions in
Those familiar with Mikhail Beketov’s ordeal describe his survival as nothing short of a miracle. The once fit, towering 51-year-old who campaigned on environmental issues and criticized his city government’s policies through the pages of his newspaper is now gone. But the former editor of Khimkinskaya Pravda, an independent publication that exposed the blunders of the Khimki administration headed by Mayor Vladimir Strelchenko, has a fierce desire to return to normal life, or at least some semblance of it. He has a long way to go and he needs our help.
Four groups in the Philippines released what appears to be the most authoritative account on the murder of 57 people on November 23 in Ampatuan, in Maguindanao province, in the Philippines ’ southernmost main island, Mindanao . The report puts the death toll for journalists at 30, with a few others classified as media workers—drivers and other support staff. Some bodies are still unidentified. The nine-person investigative team spent November 25 to 30 in the nearest large city, General Santos City
New York, December 3, 2009—Three journalists were among the victims of a suicide bombing at a Benadir University graduation ceremony in Mogadishu today. At least 22 people were killed at Hotel Shamo, including three government ministers, by suspected Islamic insurgents, according to The Associated Press.
Hassan Zubeyr, a cameraman for the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya television network and Radio Shabelle reporter Mohamed Amin were killed instantly in the explosion, local journalists told CPJ. Abdulkhafar Abdulkadir, who recently took up freelance photography part-time, died of injuries in the hospital, according to local journalists. CPJ was unable to determine immediately if Abdulkadir was on assignment for a specific outlet.
The Committee to Protect Journalists issued this statement following reports about the deteriorating health of Bizim Yol newspaper reporter Mushfig Huseynov, who has been jailed in state custody since 2007 for allegedly taking a bribe. Huseynov, who suffers from an advanced stage of tuberculosis, is serving a five-year prison term.
Whether you are an old-school journalist looking to move
online or a Net native with journalistic aspirations, chances are at some
point you’re going to need a lawyer. The Citizen
Media Law Project at Harvard’s
New York, December 3, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the sentencing of Hengameh Shahidi and Saeed Laylaz, two prominent journalists, to extended prison terms. Shahidi was sentenced on Monday to six years and three months in prison, while Laylaz was sentenced to a prison sentence of no fewer than nine years, according to local and international news reports.
New York, December 2, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the detention and interrogation of a
I hope
We released this statement after Dawn newspaper columnist Kamran Shafi said today that his house had been sprayed with machine gun fire on the night of November 27, in Rawalpindi...
On the eve of Hillary Clinton’s departure to
