New York, January 7, 2005—The independent Azerbaijani opposition newspaper Yeni Musavat ceased publication indefinitely on December 31, 2004, because a court froze the paperís assets and bank account after ordering it to pay hefty libel damages to several government officials. The damages, which total nearly 800 million manats (US$160,000), stem from seven different defamation lawsuits…
New York, January 4, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists is disturbed by a Moscow court’s finding that Kommersant, Russia’s leading independent business daily, must pay millions in damages for a July article that described long lines of customers withdrawing money at a major bank. An appellate court ruled last week that Kommersant (Businessman) must pay…
Around the world, 122 journalists were in prison at the end of 2004 for practicing their profession, 16 fewer than the year before. International advocacy campaigns, including those waged by the Committee to Protect Journalists, helped win the early release of a number of imprisoned journalists, notably six independent writers and reporters in Cuba.
The Toll: 1995-2004 Each year in January, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) publishes a list of journalists killed in the line of duty around the world. This list has become the most widely cited press freedom statistic and is often seen as a barometer of the state of global press freedom. While the correlation…
Around the world, 122 journalists were in prison at the end of 2004 for practicing their profession, 16 fewer than the year before. International advocacy campaigns, including those waged by the Committee to Protect Journalists, helped win the early release of a number of imprisoned journalists, notably six independent writers and reporters in Cuba.
New York, December 17, 2004—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned that authorities in the southern Russian republic of North Ossetia have prosecuted and convicted Yuri Bagrov, a reporter who covered the North Caucasus and Chechnya for The Associated Press (AP) until September. The Leninsky court in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia’s capital, today convicted Bagrov on…
This article originally appeared in The International Herald Tribune December 13, 2004 www.iht.com/opinion.html NEW YORK–When Raúl Rivero was released from prison and reunited with his family in Havana last week, newspapers around the world published photographs of the smiling Cuban writer embracing his wife, Blanca.