Syria / Middle East & North Africa

  
Cano winner Lydia Cacho signed a letter protesting the prize. (CPJ)

Cano laureates say no to UNESCO Obiang prize

Each year, UNESCO honors a courageous international journalist with the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, named in honor of the Colombian editor murdered in 1986 by the Medellín Cartel. The prize is chosen by an independent jury and over the years I’ve attended several moving ceremonies in which some of the most daring journalists…

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Toronto’s Citizen Lab uses forensics to fight online censors

A basement in the gray, Gothic heart of the University of Toronto is home to the CSI of cyberspace. “We are doing free expression forensics,” says Ronald Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, based at the Munk Centre for International Studies. Deibert and his team of academics and students investigate in real time governments and…

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Reuters

Q&A: Syrian journalist Michel Kilo after prison

On May 18, Syrian journalist and pro-democracy activist Michel Kilo was released from prison after serving a three-year sentence for “weakening national sentiment and encouraging sectarian strife.” Kilo, who was a regular contributor to the leading Lebanese daily, Al-Nahar, and the London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi among other publications, was detained in May 2006 after writing…

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Defending al-Zaidi, but not journalists at home

The now infamous incident of Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi throwing his shoes at President George Bush became primetime news throughout the world. In the Middle East it has been shown on television almost endlessly. 

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