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Committee to Protect Journalists A Singapore court on Thursday [January 22, 2015] convicted a blogger on contempt of court charges in connection with an article he wrote that was critical of the judiciary, news reports said. The Singapore High Court judge convicted Alex Au Waipang in connection with an October 5, 2013, article the blogger wrote that suggested a chief justice had manipulated court dates on a constitutional challenge to a law criminalizing gay sex between men, news reports said. The judge said that Au's article suggested that the "as the Chief Justice…Read more

International Federation of Journalists The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) strongly condemn threats made to a Peshawar-based journalist and media rights activist by the Taliban. The IFJ and PFUJ call on the Pakistan Government to take immediate steps to ensure the safety of this journalist and the entire media profession in Pakistan. Recently, the Taliban's central spokesperson Ihasan Ullah Ihsan issued death threats to Zia ul Haq, the Peshawar-based assistant general secretary of the PFUJ and news bureau chief of ARY News. Ihsan, using an…Read more

Lord Black of Brentwood, the Chairman of the CPU Media Trust, highlighted the successes and failures of the Asian media at an event marking the twentieth anniversary of Asian Affairs magazine and the fifth anniversary of the Democracy Forum in London on 21 January 2015.  His speech is reproduced in full below: "I am absolutely delighted to be here this evening to mark the twentieth anniversary of Asian Affairs Magazine and the fifth anniversary of The Democracy Forum. And it is so very right that this great event should be taking place at…Read more

Human Rights Network for Journalists - Uganda A City Hall Court in Kampala has sentenced a freelance journalist, William Ntege (aka Buganda Kyumakyayesu) to two months in prison on charges of criminal trespass and being a common nuisance at the parliament of Uganda. Ntege had gone to parliament to petition the speaker, Rebecca Kadaga, over police brutality on journalists and other Ugandans. A Senior Grade one magistrate, Elias Kakooza, convicted Ntege to jail over criminal trespass, and cautioned him on the second count of common nuisance. Prosecution led by State Attorney Miriam Njuki…Read more

In response to Gambia shutting down of the independent Teranga radio station after a failed coup last week against President Yahya Jammeh, Freedom House issued the following statement: "The Jammeh government should end its crackdown on freedom of expression in the Gambia," said Jenai Cox, program manager for Africa programs. "The failed coup of December 23 does not justify an attempt to stifle dissent and limit access to information. The government should immediately allow the Teranga radio station to resume operations." Gambia is rated Not Free in "Freedom in the World 2014", and Not…Read more

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the arrest of the owner of a Bangladeshi TV channel, which was unavailable in several parts of the country a day after airing a speech by an exiled opposition leader. Police today [January 6] entered the Dhaka offices of Ekushey TV, a privately owned channel that covers local and national news, and arrested Abdus Salam, the owner of the channel, according to local news reports. The officers drove Salam in his own car to a local police station, according to Ekushey staffers and Salam's driver, who were cited…Read more

Reporters Without Borders is sounding the alarm over a resurgence of violent attacks on media belonging to the Jang-Geo group – attacks reflecting a slander and harassment campaign stage-managed by the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] and run by its political allies. Attacks on press freedom by a party in power and by political factions have been on the increase in 2014, even as violence committed by non-state actors has remained essentially at its previous level. As Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the opposition party led by former cricket champion Imran Khan, has grown more powerful, the media…Read more

Committee to Protect Journalists More than 200 journalists are imprisoned for their work for the third consecutive year, reflecting a global surge in authoritarianism. China is the world’s worst jailer of journalists in 2014. A CPJ special report by Shazdeh Omari  Read more

Pakistan Press Foundation On December 15, 2014, in the city of Lahore, the capital of Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, activists of the opposition political party, Pakistan Tehrik Insaf (PTI), attacked and harassed a media team of the private television channel Geo News as it was covering their protest demonstration, and prevented them from reporting. Earlier, PTI workers had harassed reporters from the same news channel in the cities of Faisalabad and Karachi. The ARY News channel also complained that workers of the ruling political party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), hurled rotten eggs at…Read more

Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders condemns the exorbitant libel damages that the high court awarded last week against the Times of Swaziland. The record sum of 550,000 lilangeni (41,000 euros) is tantamount to a death sentence for the country's only privately-owned daily. The court awarded the damages on 3 December to senate president Gelane Simelane-Zwane in connection with a May 2009 article reflecting debates about whether she was a Simelane family member by birth. “This damages award, the largest ever made against a Swazi publication in a libel case, is out of all proportion to…Read more