Alerts

New York, December 30, 2002—Tigran Nagdalian, the 36-year-old head of the state-owned Armenian Public Television, was shot in the head as he was leaving his parents home in Armenia's capital, Yerevan, on Saturday, December 28. The journalist was rushed to a hospital, where he died during emergency surgery, according to press reports.

New York, December 27, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is shocked by the Christmas day attack on the home of Michèle Montas, news director of Port-au-Prince-based Radio Haïti-Inter. A bodyguard was killed in the apparent assassination attempt.

Montas is the widow of Jean Dominique, a renowned journalist and radio station owner, who was gunned down at Radio Haïti-Inter on April 3, 2000. Montas has run the station ever since, serving as anchor of the daily newscast.

New York, December 24, 2002—Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of Russian military journalist Grigory Pasko's four-year prison sentence.

"The imprisonment of Grigory Pasko one year ago was a politicized effort by military and security officials to silence him for writing articles about environmental dangers that jeopardized the health of the Russian people," said Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). "Pasko's continued imprisonment is an injustice that confirms the inability of the Russian judiciary to protect journalists' fundamental rights in politically sensitive cases."

New York, December 23, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) mourns the death of French television reporter Patrick Bourrat, who was killed in an accident while covering U.S. military exercises in northern Kuwait.

Bourrat, a veteran 50-year-old reporter with France's TF1, died yesterday of injuries sustained on December 21, 2002 when he was struck by a U.S. tank while covering U.S. military maneuvers in the Al-Udairi training area, near the Iraqi border. TF1 senior reporter Nahida Nakad told CPJ that the journalist died of heart failure in connection with internal injuries sustained to his spleen and kidneys.

New York, December 2, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about growing threats against Haitian journalists in the wake of anti-government protests in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien that began on November 17 and continue to rattle the country.

On November 21, seven journalists from four private media outlets—including the director and three reporters from the privately owned Radio Etincelle—in Gonaïves, a seaside town northwest of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, went into hiding after receiving menacing telephone calls and verbal threats on the street for covering the Cap-Haïtien protests, said CPJ sources.

New York, December 18, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is disturbed by a Chilean court's decision to sentence television commentator Eduardo Yáñez to 18 months in prison.

Earlier today, the Chilean Court of Appeals convicted Yáñez, a panelist on Chilevisión's debate show "El Termómetro," of "disrespect." In addition to jail time, the court ordered the journalist, who is also a businessman and an environmental activist, to pay a US$425 fine.

New York, December 11, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes today's release of journalists Bruno Sorrentino and Zaiba Malik, who were working on a documentary for Britain's Channel 4 "Unreported World" series.

However, CPJ demands the immediate release of Bangladeshi free-lance journalists Priscilla Raj and Saleem Samad, who were working for the documentary team as interpreters and are still detained in the capital, Dhaka.

New York, December 11, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes today's decision by the United Nations war crimes tribunal on Yugoslavia to limit compelled testimony from war correspondents.

The decision, announced this morning at the Appeals Chamber in the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY), came in response to the appeal by former Washington Post reporter Jonathan Randal, who had been subpoened to testify in the case of former Bosnian-Serb housing minister Radoslav Brdjanin, who is facing charges of genocide because of his alleged role in the persecution and expulsion of more than 100,000 non-Serbs during the Bosnian war.

New York, December 10, 2002--The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned for the safety of Internet essayist Liu Di, who has been missing since November 7. Public security officials have notified Liu's family that she is being investigated, but her current whereabouts are unknown.

December 9, 2002

Comments on the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government's Consultation Document on proposals to implement Article 23 of the Basic Law*

Submitted to the Security Bureau by the Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) submits this memorandum in response to the Consultation Document dated September 24, 2002 released by the Security Bureau in connection with legislation proposed to implement Article 23 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). CPJ is a non-profit, non-partisan organization of journalists dedicated to the defense of press freedom worldwide. CPJ works in every region of the world to defend journalists against physical attack, imprisonment, censorship and other threats to free expression. CPJ is firmly committed to the principle, recognized in international law, that free expression is the foundation of a free society. CPJ firmly believes that no journalist should ever be criminally punished because of the content of an article or broadcast. Freedom itself is imprisoned when a journalist goes to jail.