ALGERIA: 2 Djamel Eddine Fahassi, Alger Chaîne III IMPRISONED: May 6, 1995 Fahassi, a reporter for the state-run radio station Alger Chaîne III and a contributor to several Algerian newspapers, including the now-banned weekly of the Islamic Salvation Front, Al-Forqane, was abducted near his home in the al-Harrache suburb of the capital, Algiers, by four…
New York, December 7, 2006–The number of journalists jailed worldwide for their work increased for the second consecutive year, and one in three is now an Internet blogger, online editor, or Web-based reporter, according to an analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
New York, October 5, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged by the six-year prison sentence given today to independent reporter Ulugbek Khaidarov following a two-day trial in which the prosecution’s lead witness reportedly affirmed the journalist’s innocence. Khaidarov, whose reports in independent foreign publications were critical of government and business officials, was found guilty…
New York, September 26, 2006–The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by news that Uzbek journalist Dzhamshid Karimov, nephew of the president, has been forced into psychiatric hospitalization. CPJ is also gravely concerned by reports that raise disturbing questions about the treatment of jailed reporter Ulugbek Khaidarov. “We’re shocked at the brutal methods used against…
New York, September 19, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the disappearance of one independent journalist in the central Uzbek city of Jizzakh and the arrest of another. Dzhamshid Karimov, a former correspondent of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), who wrote critically about both local and federal officials,…
New York, August 2, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores the continued harassment of Nosir Zokirov, a former correspondent for the Uzbek service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) who has already served six months in prison on a specious charge of insulting a security officer. President Islam Karimov’s regime has continued persecuting Zokirov and…
Could you pick out Equatorial Guinea on the world map? Or Turkmenistan, or Eritrea? Probably not at the first attempt. These countries are usually below the radar of the international media, and the autocrats who run them like it that way. It helps them crush press freedoms and keep their population in the dark. That is why the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based press freedom group, has drawn up a league table of the world’s 10 most censored countries. We hope that the list, issued on World Press Freedom Day, will shine a light into the dark corners of the world where governments and their political cronies decide what people will read, see, and hear.
New York, April 4, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release by an Uzbek court of journalist Sobirdjon Yakubov who spent one year in jail on subversion charges. A court in the capital Tashkent freed Yakubov, a reporter for the state-run weekly newspaper Hurriyat (Liberty), on Monday for lack of evidence against him, the…