New York, March 27, 2001 — CPJ is investigating the January murder of Roland Ureta, program director of the radio station dyKR, an affiliate of the Radio Mindanao Network. Ureta was gunned down on the night of January 3, when two motorcycle-riding men waylaid him en route from Kalibo, the capital of Aklan Province, to…
New York, March 23, 2001 — CPJ today submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in the case of Chilean journalist Alejandra Matus. Matus faces criminal defamation charges in Chile stemming from the April 1999 publication of The Black Book of Chilean Justice, her muckraking investigation of the Chilean…
New York, March 23, 2001 — Manuel Antonio González Castellanos, correspondent for the independent news agency CubaPress in the eastern province of Holguín, was freed on February 26 after serving the bulk of his 31-month sentence for criticizing President Fidel Castro Ruz. Independent journalist Bernardo Arévalo Padrón, founder of the Línea Sur Press news agency…
New York, March 23, 2001 — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat permitted the West Bank bureau of the Qatar-based satellite news channel Al-Jazeera to reopen on Friday after a three-day closure, according to press reports and CPJ sources at the station. Acting on orders from Arafat’s office, Palestinian National Authority (PNA) security personnel closed the station’s…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wishes to protest the Palestinian National Authority’s recent closure of the Ramallah bureau of the Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera reported today that PNA security authorities, acting on orders from Your Excellency’s office, closed the station’s Ramallah bureau yesterday and barred its staff from entering the premises. The move apparently resulted from a current Al-Jazeera promotional trailer that advertised a forthcoming episode in a documentary series about the Lebanese civil war. PNA officials apparently felt that the trailer was insulting to Your Excellency.
New York, March 21, 2001 — In a letter sent today to Kuwaiti ruler Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, CPJ expressed alarm about the murder of editor Hidaya Sultan al-Salem, owner and editor of the weekly magazine Al-Majales. While a motive for this killing has not yet been established, we fear that al-Salem may have been…
New York, March 21, 2001 — CPJ welcomes last week’s release of Krishna Sen, editor of the leftist Nepali-language weekly Janadesh. Sen had been imprisoned for nearly two years on charges that were never proven in court. Nepalese authorities twice flouted Supreme Court orders for his release by secretly transferring him to a different jail…
New York, March 21, 2001 The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about the ongoing legal persecution of Russian military journalist Grigory Pasko, whose second trial on espionage charges begins tomorrow in a closed Vladivostok military court. Pasko worked for Boyevaya Vakhta, a newspaper owned by the Pacific Fleet. On November 20,…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by your government’s recent crackdown on independent and opposition media in Kyrgyzstan, exemplified by the recent closure of the opposition twice-weekly newspaper Asaba and the suspension of the independent weekly Res Publica.
New York, March 20, 2001 — A delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today met with Zimbabwean ambassador to the United States Simbi Mubako in Washington, D.C. to convey CPJ’s concern about serious threats to press freedom in Zimbabwe. During the two-hour discussion, CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said press freedom conditions have…