Alerts

New York, September 3, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned about the recent escape from maximum-security detention of Anibal Antonio dos Santos Junior, better known as Anibalzinho, a leading suspect in the murder of Mozambican investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso.

A police spokesperson yesterday confirmed to reporters and to the Cardoso family that Anibalzinho had vanished from his prison cell in the capital, Maputo, on Sunday night, September 1.

New York, August 29, 2002—A prominent Kazakh journalist was seriously beaten by unknown assailants on the evening of August 28, according to sources in Almaty, a southern city in Kazakhstan.

Sergei Duvanov, who writes for opposition-financed Web sites, returned to his home in Almaty at around 9:45 p.m. yesterday after attending an English class. He took the elevator to his 4th floor apartment, where he was attacked by three men with clubs as he stepped on to the landing, said the sources. There is no light in the stairwell of Duvanov's apartment building so the journalist was unable to identify his attackers.

New York, August 29, 2002—Unknown persons bombed the offices of the Voice of the People (VOP) Communications Trust yesterday morning. The private news production company, which has been producing shows since June 2000, was housed in a suburb of the capital city, Harare.

The explosion is the fourth such attack on the independent media in the last two years. Since 2001, the Daily News, Zimbabwe's only independent daily newspaper, has been bombed three times.

New York, August 27, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) protests yesterday's statement by the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate, a professional press association based in the Gaza Strip, barring Palestinian and foreign journalists from photographing images of Palestinian children wearing military uniforms or carrying weapons.

It is unclear how this ban will be enforced and whether any punitive measures will be taken against those who violate it.

San Pablo, Philippines, August 27, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about the murder of journalist and broadcaster Sonny Alcantara in the city of San Pablo, south of Manila, and calls on the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to ensure a thorough and impartial investigation into the slaying.

Alcantara, 51, was killed when a lone gunman shot him in the forehead near his home as he was riding a motorcycle, police investigators told CPJ. Investigators said that they believe at least one accomplice informed the gunman by cell phone of Alcantara's departure from his home at about 10 a.m. on August 22.

New York, August 26, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) mourns the death of our colleague Alistair McLeod, 41, a freelance reporter on assignment in Afghanistan for The Australian newspaper.

McLeod, a New Zealand citizen, was killed over the weekend in a car accident outside Kabul. Luis Alvarez, a reporter for the Spanish news agency EFE, and an Afghan driver were injured in the accident. The accident occurred when the car carrying the two journalists tried to dodge another vehicle and rolled over, according to international news reports.

New York, August 26, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the brutal murder by Maoist rebels of Nava Raj Sharma, editor of the Nepali-language weekly Kadam, published from Kalikot District in Nepal's remote Midwestern region.

News of Sharma's murder earlier this summer surfaced only last week, after a team of journalists and human rights activists organized by the government's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) visited Kalikot and other districts in the area.

Xiao Qiang, a 2001 MacArthur Fellow, is executive director of Human Rights in China, a monitoring and advocacy organization based in New York and Hong Kong. Sophie Beach is Asia research associate at the Committee to Protect Journalists.


NEW YORK -- Last month, the Chinese government announced that some 45.8 million of its citizens had access to the Internet. Three years ago, only 2 million Chinese people were online. At this rate, half of China's nearly 1.3 billion people will be online in five years.