Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply dismayed by your administration’s recent expansion of censorship regulations on media coverage of the civil war between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The latest restrictions follow news reports that as many as 1,000 government troops may have been killed by LTTE forces last week.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the latest brutal assault on photojournalists committed by the Dhaka police. On Friday, October 22, riot police were dispatched to subdue a demonstration held in the capital by Islamic activists. The police turned their batons on two newspaper photographers who were documenting their treatment of the protesters. Babul Talukder, a photographer for Dainik Dinkal,and Mintu, who works for Dainik Janata, were both badly beaten.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned about the implications of this week’s abrupt transfer of Cheung Man-yee from her post as director of Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK). Cheung has been a staunch defender of press freedom during her 13-year tenure as director of RTHK, a publicly funded broadcast agency with a long tradition of editorial autonomy.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is dismayed by today’s emergency proclamation announcing that Pakistan’s constitution has been suspended. CPJ is concerned that in the absence of constitutional protections guaranteeing civil liberties, including freedom of speech and of the press, the right of journalists to report freely on the momentous political developments at hand may be sharply curtailed.
October 13, 1999 (CPJ) -The Pakistani army took over state-run television and radio yesterday during a military coup against the civilian government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Pakistan Television (PTV) went off the air within hours of its broadcast announcing the prime minister’s dismissal of Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, which apparently prompted the…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is outraged by this weekend’s arrest of veteran journalist Najam Sethi, founder and editor of the English-language weekly newspaper Friday Times. Sethi is the third Pakistani journalist arrested under suspicious circumstances in less than a week, prompting fears that your government is engaged in a campaign to silence the country’s independent press. All three men had been interviewed before their arrest by a BBC television crew preparing a report on high-level official corruption in Pakistan for the program “Correspondent.”
October 8, 1999 – An East Timorese farmer said he witnessed the shooting of Sander Thoenes, a Dutch correspondent killed near Dili last month (map), according to The Christian Science Monitorand wire service reports. Alexandre Estevao said the gunmen wore Indonesian military uniforms with insignia for Battalion 745, a unit of East Timorese known for their…
Islamabad, October 6, 1999 – After a two-hour hearing, the Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan dismissed a petition that sought to exclude embattled editor Najam Sethi from political life by having him declared non-Muslim. The petition was filed on June 24 by legislator Syed Zafar Ali Shah, a member of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s ruling…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly condemns the recent killing of Indonesian journalist Agus Muliawan, who was among a group of nine church workers massacred on Saturday, September 25 as they traveled to Baucau from Lospalos, East Timor. The gunmen were identified in Western news reports as Indonesian troops or pro-Indonesian militia members.