Rethos.com - rsfcanada's News Feed

CHILE - Police say they have identified officer who seriously injured photographer Víctor Salas, but decline to name him

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:01:33 -0400

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536902279 -2147483648 8 0 511 0;} @font-face {font-family:Helvetica; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:536902279 -2147483648 8 0 511 0;...

RWANDA - Government deports independent weekly’s deputy managing editor

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:32:32 -0400

Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns this week’s deportation of Fuhara Mugisha, the deputy managing editor of Rwanda’s leading independent weekly, Umuseso. Despite having a Rwandan mother, Mugisha is a citizen of neighbouring Tanzania.

“This is an unacceptable act of intimidation that yet again highlights the Rwandan government’s inability to tolerate the few independent publications,” Reporters Without Borders said. “In the run-up to legislative ...

FRANCE - Car magazine reporter charged in connection with Renault industrial spying complaint

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:28:00 -0400

After being held for 48 hours, Bruno Thomas, a reporter with the Paris-based car magazine Auto Plus, was charged today in connection with an industrial spying complaint brought by the French car-maker Renault last year when the magazine published photos of future Renault models.

“Holding Thomas for 48 hours was outrageous, and charging him on five counts is just a ploy by the police and judicial authorities to get him to reveal his sources,” Reporters Wi...

MEXICO - Call for “exemplary punishment” for police hounding of the media

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:25:42 -0400

Around 30 police officers with the Federal Preventative Police (PPP) threatened Rafael Leyva Mexía and Luis Vásquez Vega, photographers respectively on the regional dailies El Diario de Los Mochis and Noroeste in Los Mochis in Sinaloa state on 15 July, after they took shots of a police convoy just after it left the scene of a demonstration.

They pointed guns at the journalists whom they accused of being from the "gutter press" before photographing them while heaping insults on them. Other journalists who a...

UZBEKISTAN - Detained journalist prevented from seeing his lawyer

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:02:32 -0400

Uznews correspondent Solidzhon Abdurakhmanov’s brother Bakhrom Abdurakhmanov, who is acting as his lawyer, was unable to visit him on 25 June in the detention centre in Nukus, the capital of the western autonomous region of Karakalpakstan, where he has been held on a trumped-up drugs charge for the past three weeks.

An official at the prison told him: “The directors are absent, and there is no one here who can decide whether or not we can let you see him.”

Bakhrom Abdurakhmanov said: &...

CHINA - Increase in pre-Olympic repression, with at least 24 journalists and cyber-dissidents arrested or sentenced since January

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:06:56 -0400

Reporters Without Borders has recorded 24 cases of journalists, cyber-dissidents or free expression activists being arrested or sentenced to jail terms since the start of the year. At the same time, at...

INDIA - Hyderabad newspaper editor arrested in caste-related dispute

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:05:26 -0400

Reporters Without Borders condemns the arrest of K. Srinivas, the editor of the Telugu-language daily Andhra Jyothi, and two of his journalists, K. Vamsi and N. Srinivas, on the night of 24 June in the southeastern city of Hyderabad.

The police showed no warrant but said they had evidence of a violation of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atro...

MEXICO - Journalist gunned down in Chihuahua state amid wave of violent crime

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:08:20 -0400

Reporters Without Borders is shocked by a wave of violence in the northern state of Chihuahua that has cost the life of Candelario Pérez Pérez, a 32-year-old journalist who worked as an editor on his father’s crime magazine, Sucesos. Pérez was gunned down in the border town of Ciudad Juárez on 23 June. The motive is not yet known.

&l...

IRAN - Government threat to ban Association of Iranian Journalists

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:06:12 -0400

Systematic harassment of the Association of Iranian Journalists by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government took a new turn on 24 June when labour minister Mohammad Jahromi threatened to dissolve the organisation.

“This is yet another attempt by the Iranian authorities to silence those who defend free expression in Iran,&rdqu...

IRAQ - US and Iraqi soldiers arrest another journalist in Tikrit

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:57:33 -0400

Reporters Without Borders condemns the arrest of journalist Ahmed Al-Majoun in a raid by US and Iraqi soldiers on his home in Tikrit (180 km north of Baghdad) early yesterday. His son was also arrested. Majoun heads a journalists union based in Salah El Din, the province of which Tikrit is the capital. No reason has been given for their arrests.

“We are disturb...

CUBA - After UE lifts sanctions, Cuba asked to show magnanimity towards Reporters Without Borders correspondent

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:52:48 -0400

Reporters Without Borders appeals to Raúl Castro’s government for a show of magnanimity towards the organisation’s correspondent, Ricardo González Alfonso, and other imprisoned journalists in return for the European Union’s decision on 23 June to lift the political sanctions it had imposed Cuba. The Cuban government had made this a condition for restoring normal relations with the EU.

"There have been a few advances in freedom of expression and information since...

BELARUS - Media bill approved by lower house on second reading

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:59:39 -0400

Reporters Without Borders condemns the haste with which the chamber of representatives has approved a new media bill. It was passed on second reading yesterday with three minor modifications. Media will no longer have to renew their registration with the authorities if they change address. The definition of “correspondent centre” has been modified and clause covering misrepresentation has been withdrawn.

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association are outraged by a wave of arrests of Burmese journalists, some just for helping the victims of Cyclone Nargis, and call for their release. They also call for press visas to be issued to foreign journalists.

“The international community, including the United Nations, has succeeded in persuading the military government to open the country to humanitarian aid,” the two organisations said. “It is now essential to get the junta to stop preventing civil ...

BOLIVIA - Two hurt in bombings against radio in Potosí as TV station targeted in the south

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:53:49 -0400

Reporters Without Borders today condemned bomb attacks against the privately-owned TV station, Canal 4-Unitel in Yacuiba, Tarija department, southern Brazil and against Radio Kollasuyo, in Potosí, in the department of the same name in the south-west of the country.

Political and media polarisation that is undermining the country was behind both attacks, which caused severe damage in both cases and left two station staff injured in Potosoi, the worldwide press freedom organisation said. The ...

CHINA - Huang Qi suspected of â€œillegal possession of state secretsâ€

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:43:23 -0400

Reporters Without Borders today called for charges to be dropped against cyber-dissident Huang Qi who has been in custody since 10 June suspected by police of “illegally holding state secrets”.

His family said he had been arrested because of news posted on his website, which chiefly reports on the organisation of humanitarian aid.

“With two months to go before the Olymp...

Iran: Afghan journalist freed after being held for 86 days in Qom

Fri, 30 May 2008 10:59:34 -0400

Reporters Without Borders welcomes yesterday’s release of Afghan journalist Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the editor of the monthly Haqoq-e-Zan (Women’s Rights), after being held for 86 days in an intelligence ministry prison in the holy city of Qom (150 km southwest of Tehran).

“Nazab was held arbitrarily for three months,” the press freedom organisation said. “The conditions were difficult and he was in solitary confinement for most of the time. He has...

US Senate Subcommittee looks at role of US companies in online censorship abroad

Thu, 22 May 2008 10:54:42 -0400

Reporters Without Borders welcomed a new opportunity to work with US lawmakers to look into the crucial issue of US companies’ collaboration with Web censors.

“We regret, however, that the companies singled out today, Cisco, Google and Yahoo!, didn’t take advantage of this hearing to announce concrete steps to improve the free flow of information online in Internet-restricted countries such as China” stated the international press freedom organization. “The same arguments were again heard, fro...

Thailand : Government steps up online censorship, creates toll-free number for Internet users to call to report websites that criticise monarchy

Tue, 20 May 2008 12:20:49 -0400

Reporters Without Borders is alarmed about the comments made by Man Pattanotai, the Thai minister of information and communication technology (ICT), in a radio interview on 14 May. He said prosecuting websites because of their content would cause a “big scandal” and that it was better to just “suppress the news” by closing them down or blocking access.

“By voicing a preference for radical censorship measures, the minister is in complete contradiction with the Computer Crime Act, which has been...

China : Journalist gets four years for exposing Communist Party corruption in Shandong

Thu, 15 May 2008 14:13:43 -0400

Reporters Without Borders condemns the four-year prison sentence that a court in Tengzhou, in the eastern province of Shandong, imposed on journalist Qi Chonghuai on 13 May on charges fraud and extorting money. Qi, who spent 11 months in pretrial detention, used to work for Fazhi Zaobao (Legal Rule Morning Post), a newspaper owned by the justice ministry.

One of his lawyers, Li Xiongbing, who pleaded for his acquittal in court, said that this decision violates press freed...

Haiti: Finger pointed at US interposition force in the 2004 death of journalist Ricardo Ortega

Tue, 13 May 2008 14:59:44 -0400

An official Haitian investigation has officially blamed the foreign interposition force present in Haiti after the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on 29 February 2004 for the murder of Ricardo Ortega of the privately-owned Spanish TV channel Antena 3.

The conclusions of Haitian judge, Bernard Saint-Vil, were released by the Spanish journalist’s parents, José Luis Ortega and Charo Fernández, after their visit to Haiti, on 9 May 2008.

Ortega was shot dead in...

TURKEY: Authorities urged to amend restrictive laws after YouTube blocked for third time in two months

Tue, 13 May 2008 11:08:28 -0400

Reporters Without Borders is astonished that access to the video-sharing website YouTube has again been blocked again in Turkey since 5 May as a result of court orders issued by Ankara magistrate courts on 24 and 30 April. The grounds for blocking the website were not given in either case.

“We call on the authorities to give the reasons for these orders,” Reporters Without Borders said. “This is the third time in less than two months that YouTube has been blocked in Turkey. The authorities do not need to block an entire website just ...

Reporters Without Borders Canada launches the press campaign "For press freedom in China"

Thu, 08 May 2008 15:25:34 -0400

MONTREAL, May 8 - Three months before the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, RWB Canada launches its celebrity campaign entitled "For Press Freedom in China" unveiling the list of its celebrity participants.

Three months before the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, and yet the repression continues in China.

In the context of the international campaign Beijing 2008, Reporters Without Borders Canada has organized a series entitled « For press freedom in China » wherein several prominent people pose wearing the Beijing 2008 tshirt.

Discover the face of those who associate themselves to our cause once a week in the press from the 8thof May, until the opening of the Olympic Games on Augu...

Call for release of Chinese and North Korean prisoners of conscience before Olympic torch relay in Seoul and Pyongyang

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:23:52 -0400

Reporters Without Borders and South Korean human rights advocate Park Won Soon called today for the release of all prisoners of conscience in North Korea and in China, especially the human rights activist Hu Jia, detained since 27 December 2007. Park Won Soon, a lawyer who heads the Seoul-based civic group Hope Institute, refused to carry the torch relay in Seoul to protest the lack of freedom in China.