Marking Maguindanao, events for reflection, justice
Tuesday is the anniversary of the deadliest attack on the press ever recorded by CPJ. On November 23, 2009, 32 journalists and media workers were shot and killed in a massacre of 57 people in Ampatuan, in the southern province of Maguindanao. The victims were part of a convoy accompanying the supporters and relatives of…
CPJ’s Smyth in Harvard Review: Facing impunity is key
Harvard International Review ran a feature article called “Murdering With Impunity: The Rise in Terror Tactics Against News Reporters,” by CPJ’s Journalist Security Coordinator Frank Smyth in its Fall 2010 issue, billed as a symposium focused on changes in journalism and press freedom. Editors-in-Chief Collin Galster and Gloria Park write in the printed issue’s foreword:
Mexico no different than Iraq, reporters tell Wilson Center
On Monday, before a large audience of government officials, representatives of NGOs, reporters, and students, CPJ’s senior program coordinator for the Americas, Carlos Lauría, said that the level of crime violence, and corruption facing the press in Mexico, where more than 30 journalists have been murdered or have gone missing since Felipe Calderón took office…
Mayor Strelchenko, drop your cruel complaint
Dear Mayor Strelchenko: While leading a delegation to Moscow from the Committee to Protect Journalists in late September, I had the opportunity to meet with Mikhail Beketov in the Moscow hospital where he was being treated. Today, I was outraged to learn Beketov is now a convicted criminal because you have pursued a cruel complaint.
Russian reporters beaten; both covered highway project
New York, November 8, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces two attacks on journalists in the Moscow region and calls on authorities to end impunity in crimes against reporters in Russia. Both victims, Oleg Kashin of the business daily Kommersant and Anatoly Adamchuk of the independent weekly Zhukovskiye Vesti, have covered a contentious highway project…
Lugar: Umar Cheema case a ‘bellwether’ for Pakistan
Sen. Richard Lugar, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote to Pakistani Prime Minster Yousuf Raza Gilani on September 22 to express concern about the brutal attack on Umar Cheema. The journalist was abducted on the weekend of September 4-5 by men in black commando-style uniforms, who beat and humiliated him. It’s…
Remembering Philippine prosecutor Leo Dacera
Leo Dacera, a senior state prosecutor and head of the witness protection program for the Philippine Department of Justice, died suddenly on November 4. Initial news reports said Dacera, 54, left, was the victim of an apparent heart attack. Dacera’s untimely death is a tremendous blow to all those seeking to end the culture of…
CPJ condemns attack on Kommersant reporter
New York, November 6, 2010–The Russian government must act immediately to arrest the assailants responsible for a brutal attack today on a reporter for the Moscow daily Kommersant. The brazen assault, which left Oleg Kashin, left, so badly injured he was placed in an induced coma, is a product in part of the government’s failure to…
Kenyan journalist’s murder case postponed again
Kenyan journalist Francis Nyaruri went missing on January 16, 2009 after writing a series of articles for The Weekly Citizen about corruption and malpractice by local police and civil servants. Thirteen days later, his bound and decapitated body was found near his hometown of Nyamira, northwest of the capital city of Nairobi. Twenty-two months after…
Mission Journal: A visit to Russia’s Supreme Court
At the end of our recent mission to Moscow, our delegation squeezed in one final official meeting. Vyacheslav M. Lebedev, the chief justice of Russia’s Supreme Court, had sent word only the night before that he would receive us. The meeting had been brokered by Aleksei Venediktov, the legendary founder of the radio station Ekho…