Asia

Kazakhstan authorities have extradited Uighur schoolteacher Arshidin Israil to China, where officials have described him without elaboration as a "major terror suspect," according to Reuters and other news accounts. Israil and his supporters believe the detention comes in reprisal for reporting he contributed to Radio Free Asia concerning the July 2009 riots in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Israil, a native of Xinjiang, fled China after the unrest but was detained in Kazakhstan in June 2010, according to news reports. He was extradited on May 30 of this year, days after Chinese authorities censored reporting and restricted online discussion about ethnic unrest in Inner Mongolia--an autonomous ethnic region like Xinjiang.

Public health reporting is improving in China, but not fast enough. A new Human Rights Watch report on child lead poisoning in Chinese cities documents harassment of local journalists trying to cover the problem. "Journalists who reported on the lead poisoning in three of the four locations told Human Rights Watch that police had followed them or forced them to leave the area when attempting to interview people," the report says. 

Two of the world’s most repressive nations each forced at least 18 journalists to flee their homes in the past year. In exile, these journalists face enormous challenges. A CPJ special report by Elisabeth Witchel.

In 2007, my colleague Karen Phillips suggested we do something to mark World Refugee Day. Initially planning to publish a brief statement, I set about reviewing our data for background, checking in with older journalist cases about their current situation and looking broadly for trends to highlight. As the number of cases began counting into the hundreds, it became clear that what we had was a new indicator of press freedom conditions. Today, we're marking our fifth year of publishing the CPJ survey of journalists in exile, which is based on 10 years of data on 649 cases. 

New York, June 17, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists joins with our colleagues in Pakistan in mourning the death of of reporter Shafiullah Khan, who died Friday of injuries he had sustained in a June 11 suicide bombing in Peshawar, the administrative center for Pakistan's strife-torn Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the border with Afghanistan. 

Abdul Salam Somroo is in danger. He is the Awaz TV cameraman who took the June 9 video footage of the pointblank murder of a young man, Sarfaraz Shah, in southern Karachi. That's the same part of the city where militants beheaded American Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Only when Somroo got back to the offices of the Sindhi-language TV station and played back his full tape did he realize he had the most explosive footage he had ever recorded. Explosive, and dangerous.

New York, June 15, 2011--Pakistani journalist Shafiullah Khan is in critical condition after suffering extensive burns in a double bombing in Peshawar on Saturday. CPJ erroneously reported on Monday that Khan had died in the attack.

New York, June 13, 2011 -- Romeo Olea, a provincial radio commentator in the Philippines, was shot dead on his way to work Monday morning. Local and international media reports, quoting police sources, say Olea was shot twice in the back while riding his motorcycle to work in Iriga City in Camarines Sur province, about 480 miles (300 kilometers) from Manila.