Attacks on the Media

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appalled to learn that TV reporter Gertrude Uwitware was kidnapped andbeaten during the weekend over her coverage of a dispute between well-known university academic Stella Nyanzi and Janet Museveni, who is Uganda's minister of education and President Yoweri Museveni's wife. Gertrude Uwitware, who covers health issues for Nation Television (NTV), Uganda's leading privately-owned TV channel, was walking along one of Kampala's safest and most touristic avenues on the afternoon of 8 April, when a man and a woman forced her to get into their car at gunpoint. After…Read more

Committee to Protect Journalists Bangladeshi authorities should vigorously investigate and bring to justice those responsible for killing Abdul Hakim Shimul, a journalist for the daily Samakal newspaper, who died today from gunshot wounds sustained while covering political unrest yesterday, according to news reports. Violence broke out yesterday between rival factions of the ruling Awami League, namely supporters of the mayor of the northern Bangladeshi city of Shahjadpur and his opponents from another faction of the party, according to news reports. Some 15 people were injured in the fighting. Shimul was shot in the head and face while…Read more

Pakistani authorities should credibly investigate the fatal shooting of a journalist in Baluchistan province and bring those responsible to swift justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Two unidentified men on a motorcycle fatally shot Muhammad Jan, a reporter for the Urdu-language daily newspaper Qudrat in the Qalat district in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, and fled the scene, according to news reports. Jan, 37, was also press secretary at the press freedom group the Pakistan Media Council and a teacher at a secondary school in Qalat. Baluchistan has long been the site of conflict between the state…Read more

This statement was originally published by Human Rights Network for Journalists Uganda On 18 November 2016, the Buganda Road Court ordered the former Old Kampala District Police Commander, Joram Mwesigye, to defend himself against charges of assaulting a Wavah Broadcasting Services (WBS) TV journalist, Andrew Lwanga. The Presiding Grade One Magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu ruled that she perused the evidence of the six (6) prosecution witnesses and found it sufficient to warrant the Assistant Superintendent of Police Mwesigye to defend himself. Mwesigye faces three (3) counts including assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and two…Read more

Authorities in India's Bihar state should credibly investigate and swiftly bring to justice all those responsible for the murder of journalist Dharmendra Singh, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Three men on November 12, 2016 shot Singh, a reporter for the national, Hindi-language newspaper Dainik Bhaskar, near his home in Sasaram, in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, Ajit Kumar, a local journalist and a friend of Singh's, told CPJ. Singh died in an ambulance on the way to a hospital in the city of Benaras, Kumar said. Singh's colleagues said the journalist's…Read more

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) joins the Bangladesh Manobadhikar Sangbadik Forum (BMSF) in condemning the attack on two television journalists in Chawkbazar, Dhaka on November 6, 2016. The IFJ demands immediate action from authorities to arrest and punish the attackers. A dozen people assaulted reporter Shakil Hasan and cameraperson Shahin Alam of Jamuna TV as they were reporting on illegal polythene factories. The gang, including owners of two polythene factories, also tried to burn the reporter with kerosene. "Soon after we went there to report, a few men told us to steer…Read more