Defamation

Bangkok, July 17, 2017–A ministerial proposal to amend Myanmar’s 2013 Telecommunications Law falls short of the changes needed to guarantee press freedom, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The statute has been repeatedly abused to stifle online speech and jail journalists, CPJ has found.

New York, June 23, 2017–Angolan authorities should immediately drop all charges against journalists Rafael Marques de Morais and Mariano Bras Lourenco, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New Delhi, June 23, 2017–The elected assembly of India’s Karnataka state should revoke one-year jail sentences it imposed on two editors in Bangalore, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, June 20, 2017–Moroccan authorities should cease harassing Hamid al-Mahdaoui, the editor of the news website Badil, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Moroccan Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit has filed a criminal defamation complaint against al-Mahdaoui, and the editor says he was questioned for six hours last week regarding a video the website…

Bangkok, June 19, 2017–Authorities in Myanmar should immediately drop all criminal proceedings against three journalists charged with defamation and should strike all criminal defamation laws from the books, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF) Col. Nizar Bou Nasreddine on July 9, 2016, filed a lawsuit against Youmna Fawaz, a journalist for the Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed, Tahseen Khayat, Al-Jadeed’s owner, and Al-Jadeed editor Mariam Bassam over the station’s broadcast in June and July 2016 of a report alleging corruption in the Lebanese Internal Security Forces,…

Bangkok, June 5, 2017–Authorities in Myanmar should immediately drop criminal defamation charges against Kyaw Min Swe, editor of The Voice newspaper, and Ko Kyaw Zwa Naing, a columnist at the newspaper who writes under the pen name British Ko Ko Maung, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Police detained the journalists on June 2,…

When Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her long-persecuted National League for Democracy party won elected office in November 2015, bringing an end to nearly five decades of authoritarian military rule, many local journalists saw the democratic result as a de facto win for press freedom.

Bogotá, Colombia, June 2, 2017–A Venezuelan court’s ruling ordering a news website to pay the equivalent of nearly half a million U.S. dollars in damages for republishing an article about a politician threatens press freedom, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, May 24, 2017–Authorities in northern Iraq should immediately release Aram Bakhtiar, a journalist for the independent broadcaster NRT, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Kurdish security forces arrested Bakhtiar on May 22 on accusations of defaming a judge, NRT deputy newsroom manager Soran Rashid told CPJ. The channel’s director, Awat Ali, today…