January 11: A killing in Colombia reinforces self-censorship — Gunmen kill radio news host Julio Hernando Palacios Sánchez as he drives to work in Cúcuta. Attacked from all sides, the Colombian press censors itself to an extraordinary degree, CPJ later reports. Probing journalists are killed, detained, or forced to flee. Verified news is suppressed, and…
AFGHANISTAN: 1 Ali Mohaqqiq Nasab, Haqooq-i-Zan (Women’s Rights) Imprisoned: October 1, 2005 The attorney general ordered editor Nasab’s arrest on blasphemy charges after the religious adviser to President Hamid Karzai, Mohaiuddin Baluch, filed a complaint about his magazine. “I took the two magazines and spoke to the Supreme Court chief, who wrote to the attorney…
ETHIOPIA The government unleashed a sudden and far-reaching crackdown on the independent press in November following clashes between police and antigovernment protesters that left more than 40 people dead. Authorities detained more than a dozen journalists, issued a wanted list of editors and publishers, and threatened to charge journalists with treason, an offense punishable by…
New York, January 30, 2006—Ethiopian security forces have detained a correspondent for the U.S.-based Web site Ethiopian Review, its publisher Elias Kifle said today. Journalist Frezer Negash has been held without charge in Addis Ababa since Friday, Kifle told the Committee to Protect Journalists. “We are disturbed that Frezer Negash has joined at least 16…
New York, January 23, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged at the Ethiopian government’s weekend expulsion of The Associated Press correspondent in the country. Anthony Mitchell, who reported news on Friday of renewed clashes between police and protesters in the capital, Addis Ababa, left on Sunday after government officials gave him 24 hours to…
Washington, December 22, 2005—A delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists that met today with the Ethiopian ambassador to the United States expressed outrage at the jailing of at least 16 journalists and demanded their immediate release. “Ethiopia and Eritrea are by far Africa’s worst jailers of journalists in 2005,” CPJ Africa Program Coordinator, Julia…
New York, December 21, 2005—Twenty-one Ethiopian journalists and the president of the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists’ Association were charged today with involvement in an alleged attempt to overthrow the government, according to CPJ sources. Among those charged were five journalists of Ethiopian descent who work in Washington, D.C., for the Voice of America’s Amharic-language service,…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by the continued detention of at least 13 journalists who were arrested in a crackdown on the private press following antigovernment protests in early November. These editors and publishers from the private, Amharic-language press, who were identified on a government “wanted” list publicized on state-owned media, have been detained without charge and denied bail. The journalists were jailed along with dozens of opposition and civil society leaders. Your Excellency has threatened to charge these detainees with treason, which is punishable by death in Ethiopia.Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by the continued detention of at least 13 journalists who were arrested in a crackdown on the private press following antigovernment protests in early November. These editors and publishers from the private, Amharic-language press, who were identified on a government “wanted” list publicized on state-owned media, have been detained without charge and denied bail. The journalists were jailed along with dozens of opposition and civil society leaders. Your Excellency has threatened to charge these detainees with treason, which is punishable by death in Ethiopia.