Committee to Protect Journalists
CPJ Blog
Press Freedom News and Views
June 2009 Archives
A self-styled army of Internet users, Anonymous
Netizens, has announced its intention to wage war on government censors, starting
July 1. Global
Voices Online has the text in English; it's also here in Chinese.
Whether their scheduled attack (its nature is not specified) will be felt or
not, the irritation of the document's drafters is palpable: "NOBODY wants to
topple your regime."
A year ago last week in Senegal, two reporters
covering a soccer match were assaulted with tasers, handcuffed, and abused by
police officers after the reporters refused to halt a post-game interview at
Léopold Sédar Senghor Stadium in the capital, Dakar. A year on, Senegalese law
enforcement has fallen short in bringing to account those responsible for this and
other abuses against the media.
This week, in an exclusive interview with the Financial Times, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi suggested that the press in his country freely expresses dissent. In fact, that is hardly the case. The Horn of Africa nation remains one of the world's worst backsliders of press freedom.
There should be no doubt that the government is continuing its offensive against the media following its military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). On Wednesday, Media Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena confirmed what had been rumored for more than a week: The defunct Press Council, which was put to rest in 2002, will be revived.
Last night, about 300 people gathered at San Francisco 's Academy of Art University for a vigil for U.S. North Korea North Korea
Nina Ognianova, CPJ's Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, provided testimony to the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe on the pressing issue of impunity in journalist murders in Russia. The commission held a hearing this week on Russia 's human rights record. A transcript of the testimony follows:
On
a cold winter evening--Jan. 29, 2004--I was getting ready to start my first night
shift as an interpreter for the U.S. Army in
In
Uganda last week, four
journalists from the leading daily Monitor
filed notice that they would challenge
the constitutionality of the criminal libel laws before the Supreme Court, the
country's highest court, according to the newspaper's lawyer, James Nangwala.
Before the war, I was an artist, a sculptor, and an art teacher in BaghdadMy intention to remain in my home country, to use my pen to correct injustice, and to champion press freedom was aborted by security threats that forced me and my family into exile. I left behind my beloved country and editorial desk in the hands of perpetrators.
Postings this week on two Web sites erroneously
attributed statements about young female journalists to the Committee to Protect
Journalists. Because the statements are completely contrary to our fundamental
principles, we are taking a moment to make sure the record is clear.
The unlawful detention
of seven Gambian journalists since last Monday is serious cause for
concern. These respected journalists were detained at the National Intelligence
Agency headquarters in
Being director general of UNESCO is the definition of a plum
diplomatic job. Headquartered in
I am from Afghanistan, but I have lived in exile in Sweden for almost a year and a half. I spent my teenaged life in Pakistan, where I moved in 1997 to escape the savage regime of the Taliban.
China's announcement that personal computers sold from July 1 must carry Internet-filtering software pre-installed by the manufacturer should be a flashing red light to journalists and defenders of free expression online.
Last week, President Yahya Jammeh, at left, discussed the unsolved 2004 murder case of editor Deyda Hydara in an interview on "One on One," a weekly program on The Gambia Radio and Television Service. The government "has for long been accused by the international community and so-called human rights organisations for the murder of Deyda Hydara, but we have no stake in this issue," media reports quoted Jammeh as saying. "And up to now one of these stupid Web sites carries 'Who Killed Deyda Hydara'? Let them go and ask Deyda Hydara who killed him," The Point newspaper quoted him as saying.
Roxana Saberi, who was imprisoned in 
Somali journalists held an emotional press
conference in
Journalist Roxana Saberi, recently detained in Iran, asked us
to release this statement on her behalf in response to the convictions of Laura Ling and Euna Lee in North Korea: "As a fellow journalist, I am
shocked and saddened to hear about the heavy sentence handed to Laura Ling and
Euna Lee. I hope that a way can be found to reunite them with their families as
soon as possible and I will continue to pray for their swift release."
Journalism conferences discussing global trends often
inflate the real but intermittent risks faced by foreign correspondents from
wealthier nations who travel to and report from less stable regions of the
world. They do so at the expense of downplaying if not plain ignoring the much
greater risks faced by local journalists who live in such areas with their
families and report daily for homegrown, regional media. The Deutsche Welle
annual Global Media Forum in Bonn
Amnesty
International paid special recognition last week to Ebrima B. Manneh, a Gambian
journalist who has disappeared, at its prestigious annual Media Awards
ceremony in London
I've been staying up nights waiting for news on
journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who are detained and facing trial in North Korea Pyongyang Seoul
In conjunction with the International Freedom of Expression Exchange general meeting,
the Norwegian government hosted a Global Forum on Freedom of Expression
featuring three days of discussions, seminars, and lectures from leading
experts. For me, a highlight was finally meeting Sami al-Haj, at left, the Al-Jazeera correspondent
who was held for six years at
The English-language version of the state newspaper Global Times raised eyebrows on Tuesday
with an article headlined, "Evolution
of Chinese intellectuals' thought over two decades." The opinion piece
included a quote from an academic referencing the "June 4 incident"--a departure
for domestic, state-run media, which never refer explicitly to the peaceful
demonstrations that were crushed by government troops in 1989. The article was
not carried in the Chinese version of Global
Times. The publication, which launched the English version this year, is
affiliated with the party stalwart People's
Daily.
I couldn't say anything. I didn't want to blink
and waste a single moment of looking at the beach and the Pacific. I had never
seen an ocean. If I could set up a tent on the sand, I
thought, I could stay there forever. I have loved the seas, rivers, and oceans
since I studied them when I was a child. Now here I was standing on the beach
at
It's hot in
The Foreign Correspondent's Club of China (FCCC)
has posted a
statement on its Web site about Chinese security
officials--uniformed and otherwise--harassing foreign journalists in and around Tiananmen Square . The group's incident list
includes five cases of obstruction reported in the past week. As usual in
situations the government finds sensitive, police are not following regulations
adopted in January 2007 that were intended to ease restrictions on
international reporters.
Last week, President Isaias
Afeworki of
"Twitter is a new thing in
The events of 1989, which culminated on June 3 and 4 when the army opened fire
on civilians trying to block its approach to the main site of protests at
Tiananmen, the "gate of heavenly peace," are dismissed as riots in official
state media accounts. Propaganda officials interpret references to the events as a sign of antigovernment sentiment and censor them in the Chinese media
and online. In the run-up to the critical dates this year, they have gone into overdrive.
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