World Watch Archive / June 2007
Azerbaijan
Permit will be required for Internet broadcasting
National TV and Radio Council of Azerbaijan plan to require a permit for broadcasting of telecasts from TV channels on the Internet. “It does not mean the control of someone's correspondences,” Council's Chairman Nushiravan Meharramli told Trend news agency. “This is related to the broadcasting of pornography, documentary films and interference in private life.” Details on the new regulation will be discussed during a special meeting of National TV and Radio Broadcasting Council, Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies in the near future. NGO Azerbaijan Internet Forum expressed concern about this decision and called it a form of “censorship,” Institute for Reporter Freedom and Safety reported. Broadcasting media are already subject to licensing in Azerbaijan.
For more information visit
http://news.trendaz.com/cgi-bin/readnews2.pl?newsId=943856&lang=EN
Azerbaijan authorities not concerned about health
According to Reporters Without Borders, journalist Sakit Zahidov has been suffering stomach and heart pains while imprisoned at N14 Prison, less than 50 miles from Baku. When his wife, Rena Zahidoca, visited him in prison she found that his health was deteriorating and that prison officials were not providing the treatment he needs. Sahidov was arrested and charged with possessing 10 grams of heroin in June 2006, according to authorities. Zahidov maintains that the drugs were planted on him, and during the trail the prosecutors couldn't provide a positive urine test. He was sentenced to three years in prison in November. For more information visit www.rsf.org.
Editor sentenced to two years; Reporter attacked,
On Friday April 20 two unidentified men beat Uzeyir Jafarov, an editor and reporter for the Azeri-language daily Gündalik Azarbaycan, in the capital, Baku. According to Jafarov, as s reporter by the Committee to Protect Journalists, he was beaten with some type of metal object around midnight when he was walking to his car. He told CPJ that though he covers military affairs for Gündalik Azarbaycan, he believed the newspaper's critical reporting provoked the attack. Earlier in the day he had testified in defense of his editor, Eynulla Fatullayev, founder of Gündalik Azarbaycan and the independent Russian-language weekly Realny Azerbaijan, who was convicted and imprisoned on criminal charges of libel. Fatullayev was handed a two and a half year sentence for “defaming” and “insulting” Azerbaijanis in an article about the murder of Azeris in Khojali, a town in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Reporters Without Boarders said.
Bangladesh
Daily Star reporter released on bail
The Bangladesh government released journalist E.A.M. Asaduzzaman Tipu on an interim bail after arresting him on March 21. Tipu was arrested following allegations by a local fertilizer dealer, who later denied making the claim that the correspondent had made “unethical demands.” According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Tipu is a reporter for The Daily Star and had recently been investigating the local government's handling of fertilizer distribution in the area. Tipu had written in a March 17 article that a “crisis” had emerged because “no specific criterion is maintained by authorities in appointing fertilizer dealers.”
Canada
Daily Star reporter released on bail
Karine Gagnon, a reporter with the Journal de Quebec, is facing increased pressure to reveal her sources from a November story about asbestos in government buildings, according to Reporters Without Borders,. Lawyers for the Societe Immobiliere du Quebec demanded that she provide all her notes and the identities of her sources at an administrative tribunal June 19. A Canadian amendment to the criminal code passed in 2004 states that journalists must provide confidential sources and notes only when the police view them as essential to a criminal investigation.
For more information, visit http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=22607
Colombia
Suspects confess motive in radio journalist's
Two army employees detained for the June 14 murder of radio journalist Garrid Munoz Tello confessed robbery as their motive, according to Reporters Without Borders. The owner and founder of La Voz del Cinaruco had been critical of local politicians and armed forces in the past, but he was no longer hosting any of the radio station's public affairs or news programs. Reporters Without Borders added that, although Tello was the first Colombian journalist to be murdered since the beginning of 2007, this incident serves as a reminder that Colombia is still extremely dangerous for the press. According to International Freedom of Expression Exchange, Tello's station had been under the interior ministry's journalist protection program.
For more information, see http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=22571
East Timor
Political party militants break photographers arm
As the International Stabilization Force stopped members of the incumbent presidential party at a checkpoint in East Timor, journalist Carlito Soares of the Timor Post took pictures as part of the presidential election coverage. According to the Timor Leste Journalists Association, militants from the presidential party beat Soares, breaking his arm and hospitalizing him overnight. TLJA called for an investigation into the March 26 attack and appealed to the political parties to allow press freedom and to not resort to violence against the media.
Source: http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/82303/
Englad
BBC journalist missing from Gaza since March 12
BBC journalist Alan Johnston, 44, has been missing since March 12, when he was abducted at gunpoint by four masked men while on his way home from work in Gaza. Johnston had been covering the Palestinian Territories for the BBC for three years and was thought to be the last international correspondent still working in Gaza. No group has claimed responsibility and no demands have been made public, but President Mahmud Abbas, Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh and leaders of leading Palestinian political movements have all been critical of the kidnapping. Twenty Palestinian journalists rallied outside the parliament on March 17, and many participated in a 24-hour strike held March 20 to demand Johnston's release. Reporters Without Borders noted that a total of 14 foreign journalists have been kidnapped in the Gaza Strip since August 2005. Most of them were freed quickly and left unharmed. A Reporters Without Borders fact-finding visit to the Palestinian Territories in December 2006 also identified the reasons for these kidnappings; in most cases the hostages were used as bargaining chips to obtain work or the release of friends held in Palestinian prisons.
Alan Johnston still alive according to Palestinian
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has said that his own intelligence services have confirmed that kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston is still alive. President Abbas added that he knew which group was holding Johnston but declined to give further details. Even though the claim comes as a relief to many, the BBC is still seeking firm evidence of Johnston's well being and his immediate release. Johnston has been out of contact with his employer since March 12th. Since then protests by Palestinian journalists have been held in Gaza and the West Bank, and a petition with more than 30,000 signatures has been issued for his immediate release.
BBC to Archive millions of hours of content
The BBC's Web site will soon be archiving nearly one million hours of radio and TV content, some of which has never been repeated, and will be available to license-fee payers free of charge. Among the material is an interview with Martin Luther King filmed shortly before he was assassinated, an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in which the former Beatle speaks candidly about the impact their relationship had on the band and a 1956 episode of Zoo Quest with David Attenborough catching the komodo dragon on film for the first time. The BBC's director of future media and technology Ashley Highfield heads the project. A trial involving 20,000 users will begin next month with the possibility of the service being available nationally in a year's time.
France
Political party militants break photographers arm
More that 100 news media brandished their logos on the lawn of Champs-de-Mars in Paris June 20, joining a worldwide appeal for the release of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston who has been held hostage by Palestinian militants since March 12. The organizers are also requesting the freedom of 14 other journalists kidnapped in Iraq.
“We must now, more than ever, take action to demand Alan Johnston's swift release,” Reporters Without Borders said on its Web site. “This BBC correspondent must not be forgotten as the Gaza Strip is plunged into more and more violent crises. It falls to Hamas, which now has sole control of the Gaza Strip, to do everything possible to obtain his release. Johnston should not have to pay for the instability in the Palestinian Territories, which he had been covering since 2005.”
The head of the Gaza clan that holds Johnston, Mumtaz Dughmush, also known as Abu Muhammad, is negotiating Johnston's release in return for guarantees from Hamas that members of Dughmush's clan won't be killed, The Jerusalem Post reported.
For more information visit http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=22618
United States
Finally Out
After 224 days in jail, independent journalist and blogger Josh Wolf was released on April 3. The videographer turned over video clips of a violent protest to the federal court. The San Francisco protest resulted in injuries to a police officer and fire to a police car in 2005. Wolf, 24, denied giving his material to officials and refused to identify anyone in the video, claiming that it was his journalistic right to refuse submitting his video to authorities. According to The New York Times, critics including Federal District Court Judge William Alsup question Wolf's qualification as a journalist, considering he was not affiliated with any news organization at the time of the protest. Overwhelming support of Wolf's release, which includes blogs and Web sites devoted to the case, advocate press freedom. Even after releasing the video, Wolf still refused to testify or identify anyone on the tape.