Kazakhstan : newspaper reporter threatened and other news

Kazakhstan : newspaper reporter threatened by hospital doctor

Kazakhstan : newspaper reporter threatened by hospital doctor Vladimir Prutik, a reporter with the local newspaper Kommerts, was threatened on 8 July by the head of the
trauma unit of a hospital in the southern town of Jezqazghan over a 19 June article about miners being treated for injuries sustained in work accident. Both the hospital and mine belong to Kazakhmys, a company owned by billionaire businessman Vladimir Kim.
Part of the article consisted of an interview with the doctor. Prutik, who still has an audio recording of the interview, is worried about his safety. The doctor reportedly told him: “We are going to break your nose and tear off your legs.” Prutik said he was also threatened last February when he wrote about strikes in the same company’s mines.

Iraq/Kurdistan:
online contributor given one-month suspended prison sentence for “defamation”

Reporters Without Borders condemned a one-month suspended prison sentence handed down on 16 July to Chirzad Chikhani, together with a small fine, for “defamation” under Article 433 of the criminal code. The contributor to the Arabic-language news website Elaph was prosecuted on the basis of a complaint by the governor of Erbil province in Kurdistan over an article posted in August 2007 that exposed enmity between the governor and the justice minster after the governor ordered the security services to close an official service the head of which had been appointed by the minister. The justice system continued with proceedings against Chikhani even though the governor decided to withdraw his complaint a few months later.

Iran/United Nations:
Call for appointment of special human rights rapporteur on Iran
Reporters Without Borders has written to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to urge the appointment of a special rapporteur who could play an active role in the prevention of free expression violations in Iran.
The worldwide press freedom organisation expressed its deep concern about the still very poor state of press freedom in the Islamic Republic.“Since the UN General Assembly condemned Iran on 18 December 2007, the country has seen an upsurge of violations of press freedom. More than 20 newspapers have been closed in the past six months, 13
journalists and cyber-dissidents have been sentenced at the end of unfair trials to prison sentences ranging from six months to 11 years”, it said in its letter of 15 July 2008.

“We have also recorded more than 20 summons and arrests since the start of the year. Seven journalists are currently in prison in the country, making Iran the Middle-East’s largest prison for the media”, Reporter Without Borders wrote. The organisation also raised the case of two Iranian journalists, Adnan Hassanpour and Hiva Botimar, who
were sentenced to death in July 2007.
Finally, the circumstances surrounding the murder in July 2006 of Turkish journalist of Kurdish origin, Ayfer Serce, have never been fully elucidated. The Iranian authorities have refused to hand over the body to her family. Reporters Without Borders has learned that the journalist was believed killed by the Iranian Army.

Cohn-Bendit sents prisoner list to Sarkozy
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the co-president of the Greens Group in the European parliament, yesterday sent French President Nicolas Sarkozy a list of seven Chinese political prisoners whose release he wants Sarkozy to request when he visits Beijing. The seven named by Cohn-Bendit are Hu Jia, Huang Qi, human rights lawyers Chen Guangcheng and Yang Maodong, Tibetan monk Tenzin Delek, Falun Gong member Bu Dongwei and activist Yang Chunlin. Sarkozy invited him to submit the list after Cohn-Bendit criticised him in the European Parliament for deciding to attend the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Beijing.


Syria:
Al-Hayat issue banned over coverage of Assad trip to France

Reporters Without Borders condemns a Syrian government ban on distribution of yesterday’s issue of the London-based daily Al-Hayat. According to the news website Elaph, it was prompted by an article by Saudi journalist Daoud Al-Sharayan criticising the position taken by President Bashar el-Assad during his visit to France for the launch of the Union for the Mediterranean. Headlined “Combatants lie even when they tell the
truth,” it accused Assad of uttering “empty slogans” and of being very distant towards Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was also in Paris. Sharayan wrote that the improvement in Syria’s relations with Israel was at the expense of its relations with the Arab countries. He also claimed that Assad seem happy to sit at the same table with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Syria banned distribution of the magazine Al Moujtama’a Al-Iktisadi (Economic Society) last February for reporting that several Syrian leaders had dual citizenship, with their second passport often being either American or Canadian.

Pakistan : Islamist protesters threaten liberal daily

Members of a fundamentalist group staged a protest outside the Red Mosque in Islamabad on 12 July that was targeted against Aaj Kal, a liberal daily that often criticises religious extremism. A member of the newspaper’s staff who covered the demonstration said the protesters chanted slogans calling on editor Najam Sethi not to “test our patience.” Fundamentalists accuse Aaj Kal of having an anti-jihad line and threaten to teach it a “lesson”. Aaj Kal’s editor called the protest an “attack on press freedom” while information minister Sherry Rehman said the government would respond to the attacks on basic freedoms and promised to protect Aaj Kal’s Islamabad offices. The Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors was also firm in its condemnation of the protest.
Aaj Kal received several threatening phone calls from the same fundamentalist group prior to the demonstration.

Russia:
one-year suspended prison sentence for blog post critical of police

Reporters Without Borders deplores the one-year suspended prison sentence that a court in Syktyvkar, in the far-north Komi Republic, imposed on blogger Savva Terentyev on 7 July under article 282 of the criminal code for a blog post about the Russian police that allegedly “incited hatred and humiliated members of a social group.”
“This decision is disproportionate,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We are very disturbed by the persecution of online ‘extremism’ in Russia as it often seems like a way of suppressing criticism. Terentyev’s sentence highlights the degree of suspicion which the authorities harbour towards the Internet.” A 22-year-old musician resident in Syktyvkar, Terentyev posted his offending comment on journalist Boris Suranov’s blog on 15 February 2007. He wrote: “Those who become cops - rednecks and thugs - are the dumbest and least educated representatives of the live/animal world.”



HAITI/SPAIN
Spanish authorities reopen investigation into 2004 murder of Antena 3 correspondent Ricardo Ortega
SOURCE: Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), New York

(CPJ/IFEX) - The following is a 16 July 2008 CPJ press release:
HAITI: Spanish authorities restart Haiti murder investigation The Committee to Protect Journalists is encouraged by the decision of Spanish authorities to reactivate the
investigation into the 2004 murder of Antena 3 correspondent Ricardo Ortega, who was fatally shot in Haiti while covering the ouster of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide. As part of this process, CPJ European consultant Borja Bergareche was one of several journalists who briefed Judge Pablo Ruz of the Central Criminal Court in Madrid on CPJ's research into the case.
On June 24, Judge Ruz reopened legal procedures in the Ortega case. The Criminal Court has jurisdiction over violent death cases of Spanish citizens that occur in a foreign country. In April 2007, Spanish authorities called on Haiti to create a joint official commission to look into the case, but no such commission has been formed.
"We welcome the decision of Spanish authorities to reopen the investigation into Ricardo Ortega's murder," said CPJ Senior Americas Program Coordinator Carlos Lauría. "More than four years after the killing, no one has been prosecuted. It is crucial to establish who fired the fatal shot and bring those responsible to justice."
Ortega was killed in a demonstration in Port-au-Prince on March 7, 2004, following Aristide's chaotic departure. Weeks after the murder, Aristide supporter Yvon Antoine and Police Inspector Jean-Michel Gaspard were arrested and investigated for their involvement in the incident. Both have been released since and were not charged.
Bergareche referred the judge to CPJ's report about press freedom conditions in Haiti in 2004. The European consultant told Judge Ruz that CPJ filed a U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the U.S. military's Southern Command in December 2007. The FOIA request seeks any documents, coded messages, cables, photographs, briefing cables, memoranda, e-mail, affidavits, charts or maps, transcribed or electronically recorded correspondence, and conversations (including, but not limited to: mail, telephones, computers, and radio) related to the Ortega case.
After conducting its own investigation and interviewing witnesses in Haiti in October 2004, Antena 3 concluded that the U.S. military could have fired the bullet that killed Ortega. After Aristide's ouster, U.S. Marines and foreign soldiers were sent to restore stability in Haiti. A U.S. Embassy official disputed that assertion in an interview with the station. The Marine Corps did not respond to inquiries from CPJ seeking comment at the
time.
Last May, Ortega's family disclosed a court decision from a Haitian judge, which asserted that the bullet that killed the Spanish reporter may have been shot by foreign soldiers.
Bergareche also told the judge that impunity is the norm in most cases of murdered journalists. Over the last 15 years, about 500 journalists have been murdered around the world in direct relation to their work, CPJ research shows. Justice has been served in less than 15 percent of these cases. With support from the Knight Foundation, CPJ launched a global campaign to combat impunity in November 2007.

Updates the Ortega case: http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/93769

For further information, contact Carlos Lauría (x120) or María Salazar (x118) at CPJ, 330 Seventh Ave., New York NY 10001, U.S.A., tel: +1 212 465 1004, fax: +1 212 465 9568, e-mail: clauria@cpj.org, msalazar@cpj.org, Internet: http://www.cpj.org/

The information contained in this update is the sole responsibility of CPJ.
In citing this material for broadcast or publication, please credit CPJ.

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