Asia

New York, December 28, 2010--The death of Sun Hongjie, a senior reporter at the Northern Xinjiang Morning Post, must be fully investigated by regional authorities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and by central authorities in Beijing, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Sun died in a hospital in Kuitun today, 10 days after being beaten by several men at a construction site, international news reports said. 

Prageeth Eknelygoda has been missing since January 24 of this year. He was a political cartoonist and columnist for Lanka eNews, a website whose editor, Sandaruwan Senadheera, was forced into exile. In Sri Lanka's highly partisan media climate, Lanka eNews backed the wrong presidential candidate, Sarath Fonseka, who not only lost but was jailed on politicized fraud charges. 

It's my second link to a report by Hal Roberts (and others at the Berkman Center) in as many days, but I worry that this this detailed document on denial-of-service (DOS) and hacking attacks on independent media and human rights groups might get missed in the holiday season.

The news headlines in the last few weeks have been full of stories of how DOS attacks can bring down even high-profile websites, often with relatively little technical expertise on behalf of the attackers. Such attacks are nothing new to online journalists across the world, however. Just this year, CPJ has dealt with cases of independent news sites being taken offline by remote Internet attacks in China, Burma, Vietnam, Russia, Kazakhstan, and now Belarus.

The Berkman Center's report details over three hundred other cases from 1998 onwards, from Sweden to North Korea. More important, the researchers interviewed the victims of these attacks, and categorized what defenses were practical and effective -- and what did not work.

If you're an online journalist with powerful opponents, I'd strongly encourage you to read this document and pass it along to your tech-savvy associates. Even a small amount of preparation can help keep vital news and opinion available online when you -- and your readers -- most need it.

This week, CPJ published its year-end analysis of work-related fatalities among journalists. Six of the 42 victims worked online. While you can read the full statistics and our special report elsewhere, I want to highlight the stories of these six journalists who worked on the Web.

New York, December 17, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists joins with Indonesian journalist groups in calling for a full and vigorous investigation into the death of an editor on Kisar, one of the eastern Maluku Islands. Alfrets Mirulewan, chief editor of the Pelangi Weekly, was found with bruises on much of his body at 3 a.m. today, according to Indonesian media reports. He had been missing since Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, we identified Pakistan as the country where the most journalists--eight--have been killed for their work in the past year. Six of them were on the job when they were killed in crossfire or a suicide bombing. Two others were assassinated.

I've been posting reports on one journalist--Umar Cheema--who wasn't killed, but whose case represents the other ugly reality, that the killings and abductions of journalists go uninvestigated in Pakistan. We rank Pakistan as 10th worst in the world when it comes to investigating journalists' deaths. The other pieces on Cheema can be found here.

Although China continues to censor references to imprisoned writer Liu Xiaobo's Nobel peace prize in the news and online, some have been finding creative ways to express support for him. An outspoken newspaper published a front-page picture featuring empty chairs on Sunday, in what appears to be a covert reference to the seat left vacant for Liu during Friday's ceremony in Oslo. 

At least 42 journalists are killed in 2010 as two trends emerge. Suicide attacks and violent street protests cause an unusually high proportion of deaths. And online journalists are increasingly prominent among the victims. A CPJ special report

As CPJ reports today, eight of the 42 journalists killed this year were on the job in Pakistan. It's accurate to say the Pakistani victims were like most journalists killed worldwide: They were local journalists covering stories in their communities. But with Pakistan's political and sectarian unrest aggravated by a decade-long war in neighboring Afghanistan, these journalists are covering a local story of global significance. 

It was more than Liu Xiaobo's chair that was empty at Thursday's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. What was also on display to the world was China's lack of a new approach to media that goes beyond its decades-old approach of controlling through denial and suppression. 

Relying heavily on vague antistate charges, authorities jail 145 journalists worldwide. Eritrea, Burma, and Uzbekistan are also among the worst jailers of the press. A CPJ special report

Read the special report "Iran, China drive prison tally to 14-year high" and view our database of journalists in prison.

Today we released our annual census of imprisoned journalists around the world, citing 145 reporters, editors, and photojournalists behind bars on December 1, an increase of nine from 2009 figures. The tally begs the question, What's in a number?

CPJ has documented for several years the use of spurious anti-piracy raids to shut down and intimidate media organizations in Russia and the former Soviet republics. Offices have been shut down, and computers seized. Often, security agents make bogus claims to be representing or acting on behalf of the U.S. software company Microsoft.

New York, December 6, 2010--Authorities in Sindh province must fully investigate Sunday's shooting death of Pakistani journalist Mehmood Chandio, president of the Mirpurkhas press club and bureau chief for the Sindhi-language television Awaz, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, December 1, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by a violent attack and continuing threats against Nepalese journalist Shreedeep Rayamajhi in connection with his online reporting.

• Wikileaks hit by denial-of-service attack, turns to Amazon hosting...
• ...but Amazon drops the site following pressure from a U.S. senator.
• Google extends its https encryption to YouTube, making video blocking harder.
• Censorship of the Net directly related to how authoritarian a regime is, claims a study.
• Venezuala's telecom regulator proposes stronger takedown powers over Internet content.
• Thailand's technology minister says "blacklisting [websites] doesn't work."
• UK police seek powers to suspend web domains if there are "reasonable grounds to believe they are being used to commit a crime," even before a warrant or trial.

A year after the massacre in Maguindanao province, a faltering Philippine legal system struggles to bring justice. From the murder scene in Ampatuan to the presidential palace in Manila, a CPJ delegation travels the country to examine the shocking attack and the many obstacles to winning convictions. Family members, justice officials, and political leaders talk about the challenges in this video, which premiered at the 2010 CPJ International Press Freedom Awards.  

Read CPJ's special report, "Impunity on trial in the Philippines."

Tuesday is the anniversary of the deadliest attack on the press ever recorded by CPJ. On November 23, 2009, 32 journalists and media workers were shot and killed in a massacre of 57 people in Ampatuan, in the southern province of Maguindanao. The victims were part of a convoy accompanying the supporters and relatives of a local politician filing candidacy papers in the provincial govenrnor's race. 

New York Times photojournalist Joao Silva lost both his legs when he stepped on an anti-personnel mine in Afghanistan on October 23. "Those of you who know João will not be surprised to learn that throughout this ordeal he continued to shoot pictures," wrote New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller in a memo to staff.

One of two surviving members of the Bang-Bang Club, a group of photographers who covered the unrest in South Africa in the 1990s, Silva, 44, has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, southern Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East. He is a father to two young children, Isabel and Gabriel.

New York, November 16, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the Singapore High Court's sentencing of British author Alan Shadrake to prison over his book criticizing the nation's judiciary.

Nart Villeneuve has published a detailed summary of recent malware attacks on media and human rights groups who work on Chinese issues. He highlights a disturbing new trend. On Wednesday, Amnesty Hong Kong's website was repurposed by hackers to infect visitors with a wide variety of nasty malware. The Nobel Prize's website was also defaced earlier this month, for the same ends.

As with the e-mailed Nobel invite malware CPJ described earlier this week, these attacks target one vulnerable member of the dissident community, then use that person's own communications to infect others.

If you're an organization whose audience in China is of interest to the authorities, please take extra care with the security of your website. As Villeneuve says, even if this spate of attacks ebbs, attacking online news sites to spread targeted spyware is a trend that is bound to continue.

• Microsoft allows users to turn on https by default in Hotmail, but it's still couched in warnings.
• Meanwhile, Access starts its own global campaign for https to be turned on for the most visited websites.
• Thai censorship, originally aimed at a few hundred domains, now covers over 250,000 websites.
• China "unpublishes" previously approved online articles about a Party official's private life.
• Burma's entire internal network is knocked offline in a denial-of-service attack...
• ... while Digital Democracy reports on the domestic state of commmunications technology in the country.

The prosecution of dozens of defendants in the 2009 Maguindanao murders is testing a faltering judicial system in the Philippines. Bribes, intimidation, attacks, and flawed detective work already threaten to undermine the government’s case. Will this massacre go unpunished? A CPJ special report by Shawn W. Crispin

In our special report, "Impunity on trial in the Philippines," CPJ examines the troubled prosecution of defendants in the 2009 massacre of more than 30 journalists and media support workers in Maguindanao province. Among other problems, CPJ found that local investigators mishandled forensic evidence and failed to cooperate with federal prosecutors. Listen to the mp3 on the player above, or right click here to download. (2:44)

Read CPJ's special report, "Impunity on trial in the Philippines."

Mikhail Beketov is lucky to be alive, although I'm sure there are days when he doesn't think so. On November 13, 2008, the environmental reporter who campaigned against a highway that would have destroyed a forest in Khimki, a town outside Moscow, was beaten nearly to death by men with metal bars. The attackers made a special effort to destroy his hands and left him to die in the November cold. He would have if neighbors had not noticed him and called the police 24 hours after the attack.

Sen. Richard Lugar, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote to Pakistani Prime Minster Yousuf Raza Gilani on September 22 to express concern about the brutal attack on Umar Cheema. The journalist was abducted on the weekend of September 4-5 by men in black commando-style uniforms, who beat and humiliated him. It's a case I've written about repeatedly (you can find links here, here, here, here, here, and here). But the prime minister has not yet responded to Lugar's letter, which was delivered through the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.

Leo Dacera, a senior state prosecutor and head of the witness protection program for the Philippine Department of Justice, died suddenly on November 4. Initial news reports said Dacera, 54, left, was the victim of an apparent heart attack. Dacera's untimely death is a tremendous blow to all those seeking to end the culture of impunity in Philippine journalist murders. 

• Turkey lifted its ban on YouTube and then re-asserted it within the same week.
• Digital technology is helping get news out of North Korea. Small digital cameras and tiny SD memory cards make it easier to smuggle images out.
• In China, meanwhile, Amazon's Kindle 3G e-reader is reportedly being used to get the news in. Users are able to bypass the "Great Firewall."
• José Alejandro Godoy has the dubious honor of being Peru's first blogger to be sentenced under the country's criminal defamation laws.
• Facebook hopes to provide SSL access (i.e. secure, encrypted access) in the coming months. CPJ will continue to push other sites to make their services more spy- and censor-proof.
• Will future censorship be tailored to the individual, just as Internet ads are now?
• In September, Burmese exiled media were brought down with denial-of-service attacks. Is the entire domestic Burmese Internet now suffering the same fate?

November 3, 2007, was a dark day in the history of Pakistan's media. Former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf banned all private news channels, and some entertainment and sports channels, through an "oral order." He said he made the move to stop "irresponsible journalism." Many of the staff in the president's office who dealt with the media were unaware of his decision; intelligence agencies were used to tell the cable operators to pull the channels off air. Media reacted strongly. After 80 days of struggle, jailings, and legal battles, including sedition cases brought against some journalists, the government backed down from its decision and allowed the channels back on air.  

Although I refuse to say that I am guilty for violating criminal law for publishing Indonesia Playboy magazine, it never crossed my mind to run away or to try to avoid the two-year prison sentence handed down to me by the Supreme Court. I am a good citizen who respects the law in Indonesia.

On Saturday, October 9, 2010, I went to Jakarta with my lawyer, Todung Mulya Lubis, to be taken into custody and to begin my sentence. This was in compliance with an agreement made between my lawyer and the prosecution, according to which I was to be taken to the prosecutor's office that afternoon by Lubis and the Press Council.

Burma tops CPJ's "10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger." With the scheduled general election in the country approaching, there have been reports of growing interference with both local and exiled journalists. As Burma enters the final stretch of the campaign, CPJ's senior South East Asia representative, Shawn Crispin, give me a brief summary of the online situation:

It does appear that the authorities are deliberately slowing down Internet connections to make it more difficult for journalists to file images and video over the Internet ahead of the upcoming elections.

One foreign reporter I was in touch said she has had increasing difficulty sending photographs out of the country from Rangoon-based Internet cafes. She said there are concerns among local reporters that the regime may shut down the Internet altogether during the actual elections.

Burma's military junta learned lessons from the 2007 Saffron Revolution, when many undercover reporters sent images and videos over the Internet to international and exile-run news organizations. You'll recall then authorities shut down the Internet ahead of the army's armed assault on protestors.

Since then, the authorities have increasingly used the vague and harsh Electronics Act, which broadly bans the unauthorized use of electronic media, including the Internet, to send information outside of the country, to suppress and intimidate reporters who work undercover for foreign or exile run news organizations.

Three Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) reporters have recently received harsh prison sentences on charges related to the Electronics Act. Another two await a court verdict in a a case they were charged under the same Act, among others. This is clearly meant to send a signal to reporters that they risk long jail sentences if they send materials over the Internet, including critical news about the upcoming election.

CPJ has always been careful to avoid making accusations when journalists are abducted or killed in Pakistan. Our tactic is to call for full investigations either by the police, the courts or special investigative bodies. In many such cases, the local journalists' community blames government security agencies, including the powerful Inter Services Intelligence group (ISI), as we noted a few days ago in an alert. Umar Cheema, who was abducted and humiliated over the weekend of September 4 and 5 near Islamabad, has specifically accused the ISI of being involved in his case and has stuck with those accusations.

Here's a quick update on the Indonesian Supreme Court's ongoing hearing to review its decision to sentence Playboy Indonesia editor Erwin Arnada to two years in jail for "public indecency." It's a case I've been following closely, because the outcome is an indicator of which direction Indonesia will be moving in the coming years -- toward or away from more media freedom. On September 30, CPJ wrote to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono about the case.

• A powerful advocate for press and Internet freedom, Persephone Miel sadly passed away in June. The Pulitzer Center, in partnership with Internews, has launched a memorial fellowship in her name.
• How the Great Firewall of China breaks the global Internet: stories of Chinese re-routing and censorship affecting services in Chile, the US, and even the American military.
• Thai crisis fuels social media boom: Thai authorities have shut down a number of Web sites in recent years, leading to wider use of uncensored social networking sites.
• A move toward secure hosts for botnets. As sites like Google's Gmail encrypt and secure their communications, malware botnets begin using them for their secure messaging.
• News of new Internet censorship measures in Tajikistan. (Rough Google translation only.)

On Wednesday, Erwin Arnada, editor of the now-defunct Indonesian edition of Playboy, will be released from Jakarta's high-security Cipinang prison for a few short hours to stand beside his legal team in Indonesia's Supreme Court.

Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier, two journalists from the public television channel France 3, along with their Afghan translator, Mohamed Reza, and two assistants, Ghulam and Satar, have been held hostage for 300 days in Afghanistan.

There's been a great deal of coverage in the last day or so of Firesheep, a plugin for Firefox that lets you take over the Facebook and Twitter accounts of others on your local network. If you use Firesheep, you can pick one of the people on, say, the same open wireless at your nearby cafe, and then easily view, delete, and add comments using their name on these sites.

New York, October 22, 2010--CPJ is concerned by Vietnamese authorities' recent crackdown against several bloggers and one print journalist.

• Computers belonging to South Korean government officials have been infiltrated by targeted malware in email. Chinese hackers are suspected. Contrary to what this article says, I'm betting that the attachments were PDFs, which are currently the document of choice when attempting to infect journalists' machines.
• Another intriguing academic paper, this time on the structure of the Russian political blogosphere. Commentators continue to post mostly on the LiveJournal platform and are less politically divided than the United States.
• Russian police investigate the Russian-language Wikipedia on suspicion of hosting extremist materials.
• The United Kingdom renews plans to centrally store every source and destination of every email, phone call and website visit for "at least a year"...
• ...while India's home ministry has told mobile phone companies to store every SMS text message for six months. Currently the companies keep messages for just for two days.

The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab has announced a research project to analyze the global infrastructure of Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry. It's looking for BlackBerry users from any country to take part--especially those in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, India, Indonesia, Russia and China.

All of these countries have at some point demanded that RIM make their BlackBerry network more surveillance-friendly. Some have threatened to ban BlackBerry services outright if their demands are not met. Other reports suggest that RIM has made concessions to some of these countries' demands.

One possible concession RIM might make is to move its Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) servers to locations within those countries' jurisdictions. BIS servers are the bridges between the internal BlackBerry network and the wider Internet. A locally-hosted BIS server would make it easier for domestic security services to monitor BlackBerry users' general Web traffic.

RIM has kept quiet about what agreements, if any, it has made with any government. Nevertheless, it is theoretically possible to work out the location of these BIS servers externally. If you're a journalist who uses a BlackBerry, all you have to do to help with this project is to visit the RimCheck website using your BlackBerry device and fill out a short form. The site will record the IP address of the machine your request comes from, and will attempt to determine where in the world that server could be located.

• CPJ protested the arrest of Bahrain blogger Ali Abdel Imam back in September -- The Wall Street Journal has a story on his continuing detainment.
• Activism around the imprisonment of Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan continues: PEN Canada is  focusing on his case and Canada and France's foreign ministers have urged his release.
• Local Thai ISPs are being called in by the government to help block the country's rapidly expanding website blacklist. The authorities want them to respond 24/7 to censorship requests.
• The Journal of Democracy has published Ron Deibert and Rafai Rohozinski's overview of the pros and cons of new technology in authoritarian societies. It's available here in PDF format.
• The New York Times has more info on US law enforcement's request to broaden its Internet interception powers.
• Jared Cohen, the US State Department's advocate for high-tech diplomacy, has moved to Google. Foreign Policy interviews him on his new job.

• Omid Memarian gives insight into the Iranian hardliner in-fighting that led to "blogfather" Hossein Derakhshan's arrest and sentencing.
• Pakistan blocks Facebook, but doesn't block militant jihadi sites.
• What happened when the authorities shut down the Internet in China's Xinjiang province.
• "Deleted" Facebook photos can stay available for years (from the excellent Ars Technica, now banned in Iran).
• Quote of the week, courtesy of Index on Censorship's Free Speech Blog. When asked about Egypt's new pre-election restrictions on mass SMS messaging, government adviser Mahmoud el-Gweini told reporters "We are not making life difficult. We are making life organized, that is all."

Chinese journalists are speaking out more often to protest attacks, harassment, and arrests. The discussion of press rights—and the central government’s stance—may foretell the future of broader reforms in China. A CPJ special report by Madeline Earp

Today, members of China's Communist Party Central Committee met in Beijing to open a three-day discussion on the country's next five-year development plan. And while they're unlikely to openly debate a recent letter by 23 senior Party members, which called for sweeping reforms of China's media censorship policies, it will certainly be in the air.

Twenty-three senior Communist Party members have published a letter calling for sweeping reforms of China's media censorship policies. "Our core demand is that the system of censorship be dismantled in favor of a system of legal responsibility," the letter said, according to an English translation by Hong Kong University's China Media Project. Widely distributed by e-mail and posted on the Sina news portal, the letter started appearing on Monday, according to news reports. Titled "Concerning the Current State of Freedom of Speech and Press in Our Country," the letter is signed in large part by retired party elders, many of whom held ranking positions in the media.

This morning, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that British aid worker Linda Norgrove, who died in a rescue attempt after she was taken hostage in Afghanistan, may have been killed by a U.S. grenade rather than by her Taliban captors, as originally reported.

New York, October 8, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Chinese government to end its pointless attempts to block the news by blacking out domestic and foreign media coverage of the Norwegian Nobel Committee's announcement awarding jailed human rights activist Liu Xiaobo the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. 

According to foreign news agencies' reports from China, news of the award is almost non-existent in China's media and has been blacked out from international news broadcasts on the BBC and CNN. 

"In life, we only encounter the injustices we were meant to correct."
-Igari Toshiro, ex-prosecutor, leading lawyer in the anti-organized crime movement in Japan (1949-2010)

Igari Toshiro was my lawyer, my mentor, and my friend. In the sixteen years I've been covering organized crime in Japan, I've never met anyone more courageous or inspiring--or anyone who looked as much like a pit-bull in human form.

I've been closely following the aftermath of Umar Cheema's abduction on September 4 and 5, thanks largely to regular updates from Cheema himself. He messaged Thursday with news of what has happened since I posted about him on September 16.

As most of the nation lay paralyzed and submerged in flood water, Pakistani journalists traveled in four-wheel drives and rickety boats to bring tidings from some of the hardest hit areas of the country. The Pakistani Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) compiled a list of journalists directly affected by the flood, many of whom had had their homes washed away, while journalists who were still on their feet faced a host of other challenges. 

• The International Telecommunications Union starts its plenipotentiary meeting this week. Some worry that some nations will use their position at the ITU to attempt to grab more control over how the Internet works.
• RSF covers the Burmese DDOS attacks. I've heard some really fascinating detective work on the real origins of these attacks - hope it gets published soon.
• Viet Nam's state-owned media launches its own competitor to Facebook. The WSJ says you need to enter their government-issued identity onto the site before they can join.
• Does the popular Chinese IM client scan personal data? The company's explanation, that it's performing an anti-virus check makes some sense, but somebody needs to look a lot closer.

Blog hosting site Wordpress.com have just announced a great new feature which is also a simple way that hosting companies can help journalists under attack online. The blogging hosting site now lets you automatically redirect your old Wordpress web address to wherever you move to when you switch blog hosting services. When your readers come to the old site, they get automatically forwarded to your new address. Wordpress.com uses a technique that lets Google and other search engines know you've moved too.

That's not just a good customer relations exercise: it's a vital tool for journalists who have to switch services in a hurry -- not because they want to, but because they're under attack from hackers. In cases like that, it's the hosting service who often "encourages" them to move on before they bring down the rest of their customers.

Controversial news sites, like Russian investigative magazine Novaya Gazeta or, most recently, much of Burma's independent media-in-exile, can get taken off the Net with malicious distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks.

It's not only the targeted web site that gets blown offline by a DDOS. If it's on a shared server, all those other sites may be taken down too. And if the hosting service the news site uses pays for bandwidth, they could be saddled with a huge bill which no-one will be able to pay.

It's not surprising then that many hosting services would rather a controversial website leave than continue to cost them money and threaten their service to other clients.

I wish more big hosts would stand by their customers, but I understand why sometimes they can't. Making the passage when a customer moves onto another, more resilient web hsot, is not something that any company has to do for their clients, and it's not something that all hosts think about. But when you're dealing with independent media that may have to find a new home in a hurry, features like redirects can make all the difference between news sites that keep their readers during a DDOS, and those who lose them forever.

Bangkok, September 27, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the arrest of Malaysian cartoonist Zulkifli Awar Ulhaque, also known as Zunar, a contributor to the popular news site Malaysiakini and author of a new collection of political cartoons. 

Bangkok, September 27, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely concerned by cyber-attacks against three exile-run Burma news outlets, Irrawaddy, Mizzima News, and the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have shut Irrawaddy's main website while temporarily blocking access to Mizzima's site.

Bangkok, September 24, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the arrest today of Chiranuch Premchaiporn, editor of the popular Thailand news website Prachatai, on charges of insulting the royal family. 

New York, September 20, 2010--Authorities in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa must thoroughly investigate Thursday's murder of Mujeebur Rehman Siddique, the second killing of a journalist in the province in one week, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

The Korea Times documents the disturbing increase in censorship of writing about North Korea, with the police forcing website operators to remove 42,787 pro-North Korean comments. This may be due to an increase in North Korean government attempts to enter the online debate, but some point to the general anti-Net sentiment of the Lee administration.

Oh Chang-ik, director of the Citizens Solidarity for Human Rights, defined the sudden surge of censorship as "post trauma" of the Lee administration following nationwide candlelight vigils against U.S. beef imports in 2008.

This is one of the risks when "the Internet" is characterized as the medium of choice of one political group over another. Lee's predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun, was seen as the Net-enabled President; the Lee administration has been far more sceptical of online publications, and concerned about their affects on local and international politics. Such an increase in control can't be good for the freedom of the Korean press online.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT) hosted a memorial Thursday to mark the 25^th anniversary of the deaths of NBC cameraman correspondent Neil Davis and soundman Bill Latch. The two journalists were killed by military fire on September 9, 1985, while covering a failed coup attempt in the Thai capital. 

New York, September 9, 2010---The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about an Indonesian Supreme Court ruling against Erwin Arnada, editor of the now-dormant Playboy Indonesia. Arnada faces up to two years in jail after prosecutors said recently that they would enforce a 2009 Supreme Court ruling that found the magazine's editor guilty of public indecency, according to news reports.

New York, September 2, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities in Kuala Lumpur to drop a criminal charge against blogger Irwan Abdul Rahman. He was charged today with "intent to hurt" in connection with a satirical entry on his blog, nose4news, that made fun of Malaysia's state-run power company Tenaga, news accounts said.

The discussions between Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, and governments such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and India continue to hit the headlines. In each case, disagreements center on providing customer communications to security and law enforcement services. The rumblings from these nations over monitoring powers aren't just limited to RIM: India has announced its intention to put the same pressure on Google (for Gmail), and Skype (for its IM and telephony services).

Oiwan Lam reports widespread disruption for users of Freegate, the popular circumvention software in China:

According to the RFA report, users from several provinces across the country have encountered similar problem and they believe that it is due to the upgrade of Great Fire Wall. Apart from the Freegate, when running UltraSurf and FreeU the same error message appeared.

Freegrate appears to have quickly adapted. It's hard to tell from the descriptions, but it may be a wider set of Freegate relay servers (and other censorship circumvention software) was blocked.

Circumvention software works by using a not-well-known computer to send your data to, in a format that you hope the blocking authority won't be able to decode. The vulnerability is always that identity of that relay will be discovered, and all traffic, no matter how innocuous looking, will be blocked.

One other possibility is the GFW can now recognise the particular patterns of data sent by these circumventions systems. Or it could be just a temporary glitch, unrelated to such cleverness. Such is the nature of the Internet weather.

Whatever it was, Freegate fixed it with a software update, and I bet those other services were right on it, also.

Manila, August 24, 2010--Nine months after the killing of 32 journalists and media workers in the southern Philippines, a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists met today with justice officials in Manila and called on the government of President Benigno Aquino to address pervasive impunity in the recurring murders of journalists in the country. 

Today marks nine months since the Maguindanao massacre, the deadliest event for the press that CPJ has ever recorded.  On November 23, 2009, at 10 a.m., a convoy traveling to the provincial capital of Shariff Aquak to file gubernatorial candidacy papers stopped at what appeared to be a routine military checkpoint. Hours later, authorities would find the bodies of 57 people, among them 32 journalists and media workers, who had been executed and their bodies dumped 3 kilometers from the main road.

New York, August 20, 2010--Bangladesh's Supreme Court should review and overturn jail terms and fines it gave to three journalists from a pro-opposition daily Thursday for contempt of court, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

A judge's decision today to set a September 1 trial date for several defendants in the Maguindanao massacre highlights a positive development in what has been a very ugly story. The judge appeared determined to move the case forward and, for now, seemed able to keep the large legal teams in line. 

Quezon City Regional Trial Court Justice Jocelyn Solis-Reyes needed only 45 minutes to set a no-nonsense tone for a case that is going to be closely watched in the Philippines and around the world. Recently elected President Benigno Aquino and his justice secretary, Leila de Lima, have made it clear that they grasp the importance of building a dynamic legal system to match their aspirations for national growth. De Lima has been calling the Maguindanao trial a "litmus test" for a Philippines judicial system that has been known for extended delays and pervasive conflict of interest.

New York, August 12, 2010--The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization should cancel the Obiang prize at its next session in October 2010, the Committee to Protect Journalists and 95 partner groups said in a letter to UNESCO Executive Board members today.

Hu Yong's writes on the rise of microblogs (like Twitter, which is blocked) on the Chinese Internet.

Recently, when a newspaper reporter exposed related-party transactions by a listed company, local police authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. Tens of thousands of microblog posts were sent out about this incident. Users expressed their views and revealed the immense appetite the Chinese people have for participation in news events. The incident ended with the withdrawal of the arrest warrant by the police.

Also, it appears "beta" in China can also mean "have been approached by the authorities to remove features". Four microblogging services suddenly slapped a "beta" label on their websites and turned off search after a government-led crackdown.

The United Arab Emirates' Telecommunications Regulation Authority (TRA) announced on Sunday that it would be suspending BlackBerry "messenger, e-mail and Web-browsing services" in the country from October 11, until these "applications were in full compliance with UAE regulations." Given the popularity of the BlackBerry platform in the country (an estimated 500,000 users from a population of 4.5 million) one can only assume that we are seeing a form of brinkmanship--with the privacy of e-mails, IMs, and website visits at stake.

New York, August 3, 2010—Conflicting public statements by the police in Bicol province in the Philippines have complicated the investigation into the death of part-time radio reporter Miguel Belen, who was shot on July 9, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Police should publicly clarify their findings, CPJ said.

Everything, it seems, is growing in India. Bucking global trends, India’s media are expanding rapidly, reaching into the hinterlands following a wave of development and growing literacy. Industrial development is expanding, with explosive growth of mining and natural resource extraction. In Orissa state, historically poor and restive, these two trends are colliding, producing a spike in media attacks, according to a new report by journalist Geeta Seshu.

New York, August 2, 2010—Three Uighur-language website managers were sentenced Friday to prison terms of three to 10 years after being found guilty under broad charges of “endangering state security.” The men had been jailed after ethnic rioting in July 2009 in Urumqi, capital of the far-western, predominantly Muslim, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. 

Two days before Italian photographer Fabio Polenghi was fatally shot while covering widespread civil unrest in the streets of Bangkok, he posted a short message to his Facebook page: “Every day is a gift, so do your best,” he wrote in a message made more poignant by his death on May 19. 

More than two months later, however, it’s not clear that Thai authorities are doing their best to solve the case and bring the perpetrators to justice. 

New York, July 30, 2010—An Indonesian search team this morning recovered the body of reporter Ardiansyah Matra’is in a river in the small town of Merauke, on the southern tip of Papua province, according to news reports and the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AIJ). 

New York, July 30, 2010—Two employees were injured in an arson attack today on the offices of the Voice of Asia Network in the heart of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, according to international and local media reports. The fire destroyed the studios of the group’s Siyatha TV station, but the network’s three radio stations have been able to remain on the air.

New York, July 29, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Afghan government to allow privately owned Emroaz TV back on the air, after its owner said it was shut down under pressure from Iran. According to local and international media reports, the station went dark on Tuesday almost immediately after the station's owner, Member of Parliament Najib Kabuli, protested on-air the government’s order to shut the station down. In his address, Kabuli said the Ministry of Information had made a “one-sided decision” under Iran’s influence to silence Emroaz.

When we report on Afghanistan, it’s often about something horrific—a deadly explosion, a murder, a kidnapping. But when you ask many Afghan journalists about the biggest challenge they face daily, it’s not danger or harassment that they cite. Although Article 50 of the Afghanistan Constitution guarantees access to public information, journalists say that obtaining such information from the government is their greatest ongoing concern. 

Two journalists died and several others were injured during the country’s political unrest. A CPJ investigation has found that both security forces and protesters engaged in reckless behavior—and in the aftermath, the government has done little to bring anyone to account. A CPJ special report by Shawn W. Crispin

Read CPJ's special report on the death of Muramoto and other press casualties, "In Thailand unrest, journalists under fire."

In an alert on Monday, we reported on an attack that left at least six women and children seriously injured at the home of local television journalist Zafarullah Bonari along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. A group of unidentified attackers threw grenades and opened fire on Bonari’s house. The information was scant when we first heard about the attack in a rushed e-mail message from a member of the Bajaur chapter of the Tribal Union of Journalists. 

New York, July 27, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists joins with our colleagues in Indonesia in calling for a swift, thorough investigation into the death of Muhammad Syaifullah, the Borneo bureau chief for Kompas, Indonesia’s largest daily newspaper.

New York, July 26, 2010—At least six women and children were seriously injured late today after a group of unidentified attackers threw grenades and opened fire on a home connected to television correspondent Zafarullah Bonari, according to Pakistani journalists. 

New York, July 23, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by Thursday’s killing of Devi Prasad Dhital, the chairman of Nepal’s broadcaster Radio Tulsipur FM. His is the third murder of a Nepalese media owner in a less than six months.

Prageeth Eknelygoda’s wife, Sandhya, at left, has been in close contact with CPJ since his disappearance on the night of January 24, just two days before the hotly contested Sri Lankan presidential elections. She was a primary source for our May investigative report, In Sri Lanka, no peace dividend for press. As we noted in our alert today, she has started to organize prayer vigils at Hindu and Buddhist temples and Christian churches around the country, trying to pressure the government into helping her locate her husband. Although they have had no word from him, she and her two sons, 16 and 13, are convinced Eknelygoda, below, is still alive.

New York, July 23, 2010—Six months after the unexplained disappearance of Sri Lankan journalist and cartoonist Prageeth Eknelygoda, the government has refused to offer any assistance or provide answers to his wife, Sandhya. The government’s attitude is a clear indicator of the anti-media polices of President Mahindra Rajapaksa, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Eknelygoda, a political reporter and cartoonist for Lanka eNews, disappeared on the night of January 24, two days before the presidential elections that gave the incumbent president a sweeping victory that will keep him power for six more years.

Before he disappeared on January 24, Prageeth Eknelygoda was a journalist, columnist, and cartoonist. Here are some examples of his cartoons from a show at Colombo's Lionel Wendt Gallery in May. His wife, Sandhya, has given us permission to use them.

« Previous Image   |   Next Image »

From today, you now have an alternative web address to visit the CPJ website. As well as our usual http://cpj.org/ address, you can visit our site securely at https://cpj.org/. We've turned on this feature to help protect our readers who are at risk of surveillance and censorship, and as part of a wider advocacy mission to encourage social networking and media sites to do the same.

New York, July 22, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Chinese government to dismiss charges against Gheyret Niyaz, a Uighur journalist and website manager, and release him from prison. According to the Uyghur American Association (UAA), Niyazi will be tried in Urumqi, the capital of China’s far-western Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region on July 28.

New York, July 21, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists joins with our colleagues in India to express our support and condolences to the family of Vijay Pratap Singh, the 36-year-old senior correspondent of the daily Indian Express, who died Tuesday from injuries he received in a bombing on July 12.

It’s too soon to expect a turnaround in the Philippines’ miserable record of attacks on journalists. President Benigno Aquino was sworn in just two weeks ago. The problem of unprosecuted journalist murders—the Philippines ranks third on CPJ’s Impunity Index—is embedded in a political culture of widespread violence and little law enforcement. That hasn’t changed, and here are two cases that illustrate the situation.

New York, July 9, 2010—National authorities in India must immediately address complaints from local journalists in Indian-controlled Kashmir who say they are being stopped from covering the government crackdown on protests that have killed 15 people.

It’s not the first time the Pakistani government has tried to restrict broadcast coverage of extremist activities—and it probably won’t be the last. On Monday, a legislative committee forwarded a bill to the National Assembly that would restrict coverage “of suicide bombers, terrorists, bodies of victims of terrorism, statements and pronouncements of militants and extremist elements and other acts which, may, in any way, promote, aid or abet terrorists or terrorism.” 

He's young,
unemployed and carries himself with the innocence of a man who hasn't spent
much time outside his own village. But Egyptian blogger Tamer
Mabrouk is the real deal. Appearing at an international media conference in Bonn, Mabrouk's description of chemical dumping into a
brackish lagoon on the northern Nile Delta near the Mediterranean Sea was
punctuated by photos of unmistakable filth. He won over the audience when, in
response to a question on how one travels with sensitive material, Tamer deftly
removed a memory card secreted in an electronic device and held it in the air.
That, he said, is where he had carried documents for this trip.

New York, July 1, 2010—Authorities in Nepal should act urgently to ensure the safety of radio reporter Keshav Bohara, who was abducted on Wednesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, June 28, 2010—A new Fijian media decree that formalizes repressive government control of the media could force the outspoken Fiji Times to close within three months, according to international news reports.

Last week, users of Facebook and Twitter in Pakistan began reporting a strange security problem. When they visited those sites, they found they were logged in--but with the accounts and privileges of complete strangers. Private Facebook information and Twitter direct messages belonging to other users were viewable, and the surprised Pakistani users had complete control over these accounts. Soon after the problem was noticed, Facebook and Twitter themselves blocked anyone attempting to log in from Pakistan. Eventually the problem went away.

New York, June 21, 2010—Newspaper reporter Nestor Bedolido was shot and killed by an unidentified gunman on Saturday evening in Digos City, Davao del Sur province, in the southern Philippines, according to local and international news reports. He is the third journalist to be murdered over the past week in the Philippines.

New York, June 16, 2010--Philippine radio commentator Joselito Agustin was fatally shot by two motorcycle riding assailants while heading home from work late Tuesday evening near Baccara town in the northern Philippines, according to local and international news reports. The murder occurred just one day after the murder of radio journalist Desidario Camangyan in southern Mindanao.

General purpose computers give journalists an incredible amount of power to create, research, and publish their work away from those who may wish to interfere. But such independence requires that the computer itself remain free and uncompromised by software that works against the journalist's own interests. 

Twenty-one years after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, China’s censors are still working to purge public discourse about the tragic events of June 4, 1989. But some Chinese Web users clearly have a healthy appetite for such a debate and are willing to circumvent the government censors. 

Firsthand accounts from reporters who were on the flotilla of humanitarian activists raided by Israeli forces on Monday are finally coming out as the journalists are released from custody. These early reports indicate that soldiers harassed international journalists—at least six had their equipment either confiscated or destroyed, according to CPJ interviews and news reports. Media accounts have indicated that 60 journalists or more were aboard the ships; on Tuesday, CPJ independently verified the names and affiliations of 20 journalists who had been taken into custody.

New York, June 2, 2010—The Bangladeshi government must fully explain the circumstances that led police to close the Bengali-language, pro-opposition daily Amar Desh based in the capital, Dhaka. Police cited supposed publishing irregularities when they arrested acting editor Mahmudur Rahman early today, news reports said, but the shutdown appears to be politically motivated. 

New York, June 1, 2010--Israel should immediately release the journalists it detained along with hundreds of peace activists on Monday after Israeli forces stormed a convoy of ships carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. According to international news reports and CPJ interviews, Israeli forces arrested at least 20 journalists aboard the humanitarian flotilla; three have since been released.

New York, May 20, 2010—As details of violence emerge, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on the Thai government today to investigate the deaths of two journalists who were killed while covering the violence that has wracked Bangkok and other parts of Thailand for three months. It is the government’s duty to instruct military forces to be aware of the presence of journalists in a battle area and ensure their safety, CPJ said.

Firsthand accounts from journalists covering street protests in Bangkok illustrate the severity of the crisis and the danger to the front-line press. At least eight journalists have been shot, two of them fatally, while covering the unrest in the Thai capital, CPJ research shows. On Wednesday, police entered the Buddhist temple Wat Patum, where antigovernment protesters had gathered. The troops opened fire with live ammunition, according to local and foreign media reports. Andrew Buncombe in London-based The Independent picks it up from there:

By Bob Dietz

CPJ’s March 2009 special report, “Failure to Investigate,” addressed three severe attacks on the media in January of that year. CPJ also found a broad pattern in which “top journalists had been killed, attacked, threatened, and harassed since the government began to pursue an all-out military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in late 2006.”

New York, May 17, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the Sudanese government’s decision to shut down opposition daily Rai al-Shaab and to arrest three of its journalists.

The murder of a journalist such as Ghulam Rasool Birhamani might tend to be quickly forgotten. After all, he was a local reporter for a small newspaper, the Daily Sindhu Hyderabad, in a country where violence is routine. But hundreds of his fellow journalists turned out on Wednesday for a march to protest his killing and push for justice, Dawn newspaper reported.

New York, May 12, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists joins the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) in calling for a thorough investigation into the killing of Sindh-based journalist Ghulam Rasool Birhamani. His body was found Monday morning, outside the village of Wahi Pandhi in Sindh province. Both organizations reported that the journalist was kidnapped the evening before his body was discovered.

Last week, I attended an unusual event called the Courage Forum at which half a dozen speakers, from tightrope artist Philippe Petit and Sudanese rapper Emmanuel Jal to Virgin founder and chairman Richard Branson, talked about about overcoming fear.

New York, May 11, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by new demands made by a militant group calling itself the Asian Tigers, the captors of freelance journalist Asad Qureshi, left, who has been held in Pakistan since March 26. In a video sent to the Rome-based news agency Adnkronos International today, the kidnappers insisted that Pakistan release at least 160 Islamic militants in exchange for his freedom, according to international news reports. The journalist is being held in Pakistan’s tribal region near the border with Afghanistan.

Mujahid Kakar, head of news and current affairs for Afghanistan’s Moby Media Group, was at the United Nations on Monday to give a speech on World Press Freedom Day. He stopped by CPJ’s office afterward, and we talked for more than an hour about journalism in Afghanistan. Kakar, left, whose oversight includes the influential Tolo TV, made a string of important points concerning lapses in professionalism, the importance of international support, and the challenges that front-line journalists face from all sides. I’ll bullet-point some of them, and then quote Kakar about what he felt was the most important part of his message:

New York, May 3, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern today after a militant group executed a former Pakistani intelligence official who was abducted along with documentary filmmaker Asad Qureshi.   

New York, May 3, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists is heartened by news reports today that President Mahinda Rajapaksa has issued a pardon to Sri Lankan journalist J.S. Tissainayagam, left. CPJ is waiting for official clarification, however, concerning several important details. 

In response to news reports today that Sri Lanka will offer a full pardon to journalist J.S. Tissainayagam, we issued this statement.

CPJ challenges authorities in 10 nations
to bring justice and reverse culture of impunity

In Sri Lanka, there is a lull of sorts in outright attacks on the media as the Rajapaksa government takes stock of where it stands, which is in a very strong position: Last May the government declared a final victory in the brutal 30-year conflict with Tamil secessionists. In January, President Mahinda Rajapksa won a convincing victory in the presidential elections, and in April, his United Peoples Freedom Alliance took 144 seats of the 225 member seats in parliamentary elections, with a chance to build a political coalition that will give him the two-thirds majority he needs to begin rewriting the constitution.

New York, April 27, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the April 13 release from prison of Hang Chakra, editor and publisher of the opposition-aligned Khmer Machas Srok daily newspaper in Cambodia.

Every day at CPJ, we count numbers: 18 journalists killed in Russia since 2000, 32 journalists and media workers slaughtered in the Maguindanao massacre, 88 journalists murdered over the last 10 years in Iraq. But on Tuesday night at CPJ’s Impunity Summit at Columbia University, CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon clarified why we were gathered: “At the end of the day, it’s not about numbers,” he said. “It’s about people.”

CPJ’s 2010 Impunity Index spotlights countries
where journalists are slain and killers go free

New York, April 19, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists is saddened by the death of Azamat Ali Bangash, a correspondent for Saama TV. According to the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), Bangash was killed in an April 17 suicide bombing while covering food distribution in a refugee camp near Orakzai, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas near the border with Afghanistan. Ali was the second Saama journalists killed in a suicide bombing in two days.

New York, April 19, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists is dismayed by the Philippine government’s decision to drop murder charges against Zaldy Ampatuan, former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and his uncle, Akmad Ampatuan, former mayor of Mamasapano on the southern island of Mindanao. The move, announced in Manila on Saturday, overruled the Quezon City Regional Court, which is hearing the Maguindanao massacre case. Four other members of the powerful Ampatuan clan continue to face murder charges.

New York, April 16, 2010--At least one Pakistani journalist was killed and others were injured in a suicide bombing at a hospital in Quetta today, according to international news reports. Details are still emerging, and some of the injured are reported to be in critical condition, but Pakistani colleagues tell CPJ that a senior Samaa TV cameraman, Malik Arif, died in the attack. Five other journalists--Noor Elahi Bugti of Samaa TV, Salman Ashraf of Geo TV, Fareed Ahmed of Dunya TV, Khalil Ahmed of Express TV, and Malik Sohail of Aaj TV--were injured.

As part of its declaration of emergency, the Thai government last week radically broadened existing Internet censorship powers to prohibit a wide range of speech, including independent commentary and newsgathering. In doing so, it has exacerbated an already fragile political situation and may have permanently weakened Thailand's constitutional protections for press freedom.

New York, April 12, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists is saddened and outraged by the fatal shooting of Reuters cameraman Hiro Muramoto during armed exchanges between government soldiers and antigovernment protestors on Saturday. Muramoto, left, a Japanese national, was shot in the chest while filming an early-afternoon confrontation and was pronounced dead at a Bangkok hospital, according to local and international news reports.

New York, April 9, 2010—The Thai government should restore access to news outlets censored after a state of emergency was declared Wednesday in response to antigovernment protests, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Journalists reporting on the unrest are increasingly vulnerable to physical assault as clashes between protesters and authorities escalate. 

New York, April 8, 2010—Reports that freelance documentary filmmaker Asad Qureshi has gone missing on a reporting trip in a tribal area of Pakistan are deeply concerning, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. 

New York, April 7, 2010—Fiji’s military regime should withdraw a draft decree that would regulate media ownership and news content, while authorizing the imposition of fines and prison terms for violations, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. 

New York, April 2, 2010—The denial of service attack on the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China (FCCC) Web site is contributing to an atmosphere in which journalists feel their communication is not secure and their reporting is under threat, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, April 2, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern today after a Japanese official said freelance Japanese journalist Kosuke Tsuneoka had apparently been kidnapped in northern Afghanistan. 

New York, March 31, 2010—News reports that the Yahoo e-mail accounts of reporters and others in China and Taiwan have been compromised are a reminder that journalists must be vigilant when communicating over the Internet, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ called on Internet companies to reassess their business practices in countries where users’ communications cannot be adequately protected.

New York, March 29, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns and calls for a thorough investigation into grenade attacks launched against two state-owned television news stations in Thailand. The attacks—one against army-run Channel 5, the other against the National Broadcasting Services of Thailand (NBT)—took place Saturday night in the capital, Bangkok. 

A bomb explosion injured three local journalists who were accompanying a convoy of security forces in the Lower Dir district of northwestern Pakistan on February 3, 2010, according to a statement by the Karachi-based Pakistan Press Foundation and international news reports.

Staffers at Sirasa TV confirmed media reports that about 200 people gathered outside the in-town office of the independent broadcaster and threw stones, breaking windows and injuring staffers on March 22, 2010. Some in the crowd carried posters in Sinhala and English protesting the station’s plan to broadcast a concert by pop singer Akon scheduled for April in the capital city, Colombo. One of the singer’s recent videos had included a statue of the Buddha in the background while poolside partygoers danced in the foreground. Most of Sri Lanka’s ethnic Sinhalese majority are Buddhist. Police were reportedly made a few arrests. 

On Monday, Google made good on its promise to stop censorship of its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, by rerouting viewers to its unfettered Hong Kong site. According to the company’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, the move was “a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced—it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China.”

Violence against provincial journalists, self-censorship, and the rise of paid news were the leading press freedom concerns cited by editors and journalists that I met with during my recent visit to India. But for Shubhranshu Choudhary, known as Shu, it’s the ban on radio news that most concerns him. He believes the ban is fueling India’s long-simmering Maoist insurgency, and he’s fighting back, using mobile phone technology to bring independent news to the tribal regions where the Maoists operate.

New York, March 23, 2010—The Philippine government must vigorously pursue its investigation into a series of death threats received by Marites Dañguilan Vitug, editor-in-chief of the online news outlet Newsbreak, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

We issued the following statement today after Google announced it had stopped censoring its search engine in China:

New York, March 11, 2010—A state official responsible for media regulation said Wednesday the government should require Chinese journalists to obtain official training to report the news, according to local and international news reports. Domestic journalists already need government-issued identity cards to work in China.  

Colombo, March 10, 2010—In a meeting with a CPJ delegation today, Sri Lankan Attorney General Mohan Peiris said he was prepared to offer protection to any of the nation’s journalists who return to the country from exile.

Kensuke Nishioka, 42, looked different from the other Japanese journalists I encountered in Tokyo during a February trip. Maybe it was the pink hair. “Don’t believe any journalist who says they’re at risk in Japan,” he declared, shrugging off the time, at age 32, when two members of a nationalist group cornered him in his office, broke his ribs, and injured three others in protest against an article he wrote. (Police arrested and charged the attackers.) Or the following year when the Japanese mafia, the yakuza, kidnapped him for a day and threatened him to stop reporting.

“Some have commented that this event should go down in media history.” So says Zhang Hong (in English translation on The Wall Street Journal’s China blog today), co-author of an unprecedented joint editorial published last week by 13 Chinese newspapers. The editorials, criticizing the hukou system, which registers individuals in their place of birth and limits their ability to find work and education elsewhere, quickly disappeared online.

New York, March 2, 2010—The Afghan government should allow full coverage of terrorist attacks, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today, following reports that intelligence officials had privately issued a ban on live coverage to news outlets on Monday.

On the run for more than a calendar year from court-ordered arrest warrants, Osmeña Montañer and Estrella Sabay, the alleged masterminds in the 2005 murder of Philippine investigative journalist Marlene Garcia-Esperat, at left, are now out of hiding and back at work as senior Department of Agriculture finance officials, according to recent reports in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

New York, February 24, 2010—One month after the disappearance of her husband Prageeth Eknelygoda, the journalist’s wife, Sandhya Eknelygoda , told CPJ that she has not been able to get police or other government officials to actively investigate the case.

The times, they’re getting a bit too interesting in Nepal. Journalists who are supposed to cover the news are becoming the news themselves.

Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari helped us launch Attacks on the Press at the United Nations in New York today. Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian citizen, was labeled an enemy of the Iranian regime and cruelly imprisoned for 118 days last year in Tehran. His very presence today, CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney noted, was testament to the “tremendous efforts of press freedom groups around the world" that have advocated for the release of jailed journalists. But with at least 47 journalists in jail in Iran as of February 1, according to CPJ research, it’s still a “pretty grim picture,” Mahoney said. 

“The e-mail came in at 8.48 p.m.,” Philippine journalist Maria Ressa told a hushed audience at CPJ’s panel discussion, Press Freedom: On the Frontlines and Online, this morning at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan in Tokyo. She was describing how the first photo from the November massacre in Maguindanao province reached the mainstream Philippine media. Thirty-two journalists and media workers were slaughtered in the deadliest single attack that CPJ has ever recorded.

Katsuya Fujimoto and Shuichi Yutaka, the general secretary and the president of Shinbun Roren, the Japan Federation of Newspaper Workers’ Unions, sit at a table in their office in Tokyo’s Bunkyo-ku district amid a pile of papers. A software engineer with a media company and a journalist, each on two years’ leave, they are shuffling through documents showing their organization’s efforts to reform the Kisha Club system I wrote about yesterday. 

New York, February 11, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the disappearance of two journalists in Sri Lanka. Chandana Sirimalwatte, chief editor of the Sri Lankan weekly newspaper Lanka, was detained by police around noon on January 30, according to his wife, Hemali Abeyratne, and staffers at the paper. Lanka e News journalist Prageeth Eknelygoda has been missing since January 24.

New York, February 10, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists joins with its colleague in the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) in demanding an end to the impunity surrounding attacks on journalists in Nepal. The FNJ made the demands today in Kathmandu during a protest rally that came two days after the shooting death of Jamim Shah, the chairman of the Nepalese television station and satellite network Space Time Network.

New York, February 9, 2010—An indictment in the Philippines of nearly 200 people in the November 23 killings of 57 people, including 32 journalists and media workers, is a welcome first step toward achieving justice in this terribly slaying, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ hopes that this signals a coming reversal in the country’s abysmal record of impunity.

A Chinese dissident who writes about rights abuses is ending an involuntary exile in Japan on Friday. Or so he hopes.

Feng Zhenghu has booked a flight departing Japan’s Narita Airport for Shanghai at 9:45 a.m. on February 12. That was the topic of an impromptu press conference held Monday afternoon in the brightly lit lobby of the Nippon Press Center Building in central Tokyo.  A small crowd of Chinese and Japanese journalists clustered round him snapping photos while an anxious security guard paced up and down, interrupting every now and then to ask the group to disperse. 

Google has gone quiet since its announcement last month that it was unwilling to continue censoring search results on Google.cn in China. The Washington Post reported Thursday that the company is seeking help from the U.S. government to trace hackers behind security breaches, which it said targeted its own intellectual property and individual human rights activists. A Reuters analysis said the company may also be grappling with the financial and legal implications of ceasing censorship in defiance of Chinese law.

Regardless of Google’s next step or the motivations behind it, the company’s January 12 statement has already had a positive effect: Journalists and human rights activists who have long complained about e-mail security in relation to China have a much wider audience for their concerns. 

New York, February 1, 2010—The Burmese government should cease its campaign of intimidation and harassment against the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), an exile-run television news provider, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, January 29, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a jail sentence given to a Vietnamese journalist on charges that she spread anti-state propaganda and called today for her immediate release.

New York, January 29, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by reports that journalists in Sri Lanka have been subjected to government intimidation, arrests, censorship, and harassment in the aftermath of this week’s presidential election. 

Siweiluozi’s Blog, an anonymous blog that covers various Chinese legal issues and current affairs, has translated a series of updates by Chinese writer Yang Zili, who was arrested in 2001 and later convicted of subversion against the state for online articles. Released last year after serving eight years, Yang joined Twitter and has been describing his incarceration in a series of short posts. 

In November 2009, I received this e-mail message from a few people in Pakistan:

TOP NEWS MANAGERS AGREE ON TV COVERAGE GUIDELINES

ISLAMABAD—Top news managers from Pakistan’s eight television channels have evolved a first-of-its-kind voluntary framework to standardize professional guidelines governing terrorism coverage. [A PDF of November’s message is here.]

Since then there hasn’t been much more news about the issue, and I thought that might be a good thing. I’m always wary when I see words like “guidelines” or “rules” or “regulations” for news coverage, terrorism-related or not. But the November announcement seemed to have broad industry support, and the guidelines were being called “voluntary”—always better than having them mandated by the government. 

Local news reports said a photojournalist was shot and five other journalists assaulted in the aftermath of a 22-hour battle between militants and local authorities in Srinagar, summer capital of the troubled north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir on January 7, 2010.

News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

The identification this week of photographer Jepon Cadagdagon as another victim in the Nov. 23 Maguindanao massacre has raised the death toll of journalists and media workers to 32. Even before accounting for Cadagdagon, CPJ had characterized the massacre, allegedly carried out by a ruling political clan in the area, as the deadliest event for the press in recent memory.    

New York, January 19, 2010—Foreign correspondents in Beijing told the Committee to Protect Journalists that they are aware of recent hacker attacks on colleagues’ Gmail accounts, and said they have long assumed that their e-mail is monitored and vulnerable to attack. 

New York, January 13, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern today after Google said Tuesday it had uncovered evidence of cyber attackers from China targeting its own and other companies’ infrastructures, as well as individual Gmail accounts. CPJ welcomed Google’s statement that it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, in light of the discovery.

New York, January 13, 2010—As Sri Lanka’s media comes under increasing partisan pressure, the Committee to Protect Journalists calls on all sides contesting the January 26 general elections to respect the role of journalists in covering the campaign and voting process. CPJ notes with concern today’s assault on the BBC’s Sinhala service reporter who, according to Sri Lankan media reports, was hospitalized after a political mob, apparently linked to supporters of an agriculture minster, attacked her as she was covering the event.

With Monday’s release  of J. S. Tissainayagam on bail, maybe things are looking up for the media in Sri Lanka. CPJ welcomed Tissainayagam’s release from a sentence of 20 years' “rigorous imprisonment,” but called on President Mahinda Rajapaksa to extend him a full pardon, as it is within his presidential powers to do. For now, at least, Tissa, as he is known, is out of his prison cell though not free to leave the country—the appeal court that set him free demanded that he hand over his passport as part of the bail agreement. But there are many other cases still hanging in the air in Sri Lanka that will not go away, even though they are making their way through the courts.

New York January 11, 2010—The death of U.K.-based Sunday Mirror reporter Rupert Hamer, who was killed in an explosion outside a village in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, is an indicator of the rising danger for journalists in Afghanistan. The explosion also wounded Hamer’s colleague photographer Philip Coburn and took the life of a U.S. Marine.

New York, January 11, 2010 — The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release on bail of Sri Lankan journalist J.S. Tissainayagam on Monday in Colombo, but calls on President Mahinda Rajapaksa to use his constitutional power to extend a full pardon and erase the 20 year sentence of “rigorous imprisonment” that was handed down in August.

On November 24, CPJ honored Tissainayagam with one of its annual International Press Freedom Awards, recognizing his courageous journalism in a country where the media is under siege. 

New York, January 8, 2010—Philippine authorities must quickly investigate the shooting of radio broadcaster Eugene Paet, an anchorman for Radio DWRS in Vigan city in Ilocos Sur province. According to local and international media reports, Paet, 47, was shot in the stomach by two gunmen on a motorcycle as he was on his way to work on Thursday evening. Paet remained in serious condition in the intensive care unit of a local hospital on Friday evening.

Even by Sri Lanka’s standards, January 2009 was a brutal month for journalists.

On January 6, on a quiet road on the outskirts of Colombo, the country’s main independently owned TV station, Sirasa TV, was raided at 2:05 a.m. by 15 to 20 masked armed men working with military precision. At 2:35:31 they detonated an explosion, possibly a claymore mine, a military-style antipersonnel mine set off by an electrical charge through wires leading to the device.

New York, January 7, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Xining provincial court in Qinghai province to allow imprisoned Tibetan documentary filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen to appeal a six-year prison sentence he was given last week.

New York, January 7, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the harsh sentencing of Hla Hla Win, a broadcast journalist with the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). She was sentenced to 20 years in prison on December 30 for violating the vague and draconian Electronic Act. 

New York, January 4, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about the fate of two French journalists and their three Afghan colleagues, all apparently kidnapped while on assignment in the eastern province of Kapisa for France 3 public television station. The Afghan government reported them kidnapped on December 30. The names of the crew have not been released by the Afghan or French governments, and France 3 has declined to publicly identify them. CPJ was unable to reach the station immediately for comment.