New York, August 6, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the death sentence handed down in mid-July by a revolutionary court against Adnan Hassanpour, a journalist and former editor for the now-defunct Kurdish-Persian weekly Aso in Iran’s northwestern province of Kurdistan. Iranian Kurdish environmental activist Abdulvahed Butimar was also convicted and sentenced to death. Hassanpour…
New York, May 30, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Iranian authorities to drop criminal charges against an Iranian-American journalist working for U.S.-backed Radio Farda, to return the journalist’s seized passport, and to allow her to travel freely. On May 15, the Special Security Bureau of the Revolutionary Court Public Prosecutor’s office charged…
New York, May 15, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the recent arrests of four Iranian student editors of Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran following the publication of newsletters carrying articles deemed insulting to Islam. The students say they had no involvement in the publications, calling them a fraud designed to disrupt student elections.…
By Joel SimonAs Venezuelan elections approached in November, President Hugo Chávez accused news broadcasters of engaging in a “psychological war to divide, weaken, and destroy the nation.” Their broadcast licenses, he said, could be pulled–no idle threat in a country where a vague 2004 media law allows the government to shut down stations for work…