Bob Dietz/CPJ Asia Program Coordinator
Sri Lanka’s woeful January way-points
For Sri Lankan journalists, January might be the cruelest month. In January 2011, Sonali Samarasinghe wrote about the death of her husband Lasantha Wickramatunga two years earlier on January 8, 2009. In January 2010 I reported in “Sri Lanka: A year later, still failing to fight media attacks” about the government’s inactivity in investigating Wickramatunga’s…
More revelations of threats to Pakistani journalists
We released a statement Thursday–CPJ supports Pakistani journalists facing threats–about the decision of two Pakistani journalists to publicly announce the threats they had been receiving. Najam Sethi, editor of The Friday Times and host of a popular Urdu-language political program on Geo TV, and Jugnu Mohsin, also a Friday Times editor, said they had lived…
‘Where is the state?’ asks Pakistani journalist under threat
Since making me aware of threats to Hamid Mir on December 20, Umar Cheema and I have been encouraging Pakistani journalists we know who are under threat to step forward with their own experiences. Ghulamaddin, producer for Samaa TV in Karachi who broke the story of students held in chains at a seminary, is coming…
More on threats and journalist safety in Pakistan
Tuesday’s blog about threats to Hamid Mir generated a lot of discussion on our site. Mir messaged overnight, saying his case was widely reported in newspapers and discussed in Parliament, and there will be a committee of Parliament established to probe the issue. The Associated Press of Pakistan noted that “Minster for Interior Rehman Malik condemned the…
Pakistan’s Hamid Mir publicizes a death threat
Geo TV’s most prominent television anchor, and one of the most prominent journalists in Pakistan, has just circulated a detailed email message of threats he has been receiving. Hamid Mir’s open, public response to the threats is a textbook case of how to handle the steady stream of intimidation that journalists face, not just in…
Six years later: Hayatullah Khan’s family calls for justice
Six years after the murder of journalist Hayatullah Khan, his brother Ahsan Ahmad Khan has asked CPJ to put pressure on the government and the Supreme Court of Pakistan to ensure that a special investigation carried out in September 2006 into the journalist’s death be released. (A copy of Ahsan Ahmad’s message can be found…
Sri Lanka’s savage smokescreen
Sri Lanka’s former attorney general Mohan Peiris, who is now the senior legal adviser to the cabinet and who many Sri Lankans say is aiming to become the next Supreme Court Chief Justice, has made conflicting statements about missing journalist Prageeth Eknelygoda. The discrepancies do more than point up the government’s indifference to Eknelygoda’s fate…
Keeping a website alive behind the Great Firewall
Wednesday’s post, “Advice for colleagues on the digital front lines,” offered practical advice for keeping a website up and running in a hostile political environment. But such measures are not universally applicable. Sky Canaves, CPJ’s new East Asia and Internet consultant in Hong Kong, sent this reality check for Internet writers in China, where tighter…
Advice for colleagues on the digital front lines
If you’re running a website that’s come under attack, or is likely to, here is some advice on how to protect yourself. First, a little background: On Monday we filed an alert about the Sri Lankan government’s blocking of at least five websites there. The move silenced just about all of the country’s independent online…
China confronts Internet rumors and trashy TV
Along with cracking down on what it considers trashy TV — China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) said Tuesday that it will limit entertainment and add more news and other programs that “build morality and promote the core values of socialism” — the government is going after what it calls rumor mongers…