Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

(CPJ/IFEX, New York) – CPJ is deeply concerned for the safety of seven Colombian journalists and their driver, who were kidnapped by leftist guerrillas on 10 November 1999 while traveling to cover a right-wing paramilitary attack in Atánquez, in the northern department of Cesar. Local sources informed CPJ that the journalists left the Cesar capital […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – CPJ is deeply dismayed by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s administration’s recent expansion of censorship regulations on media coverage of the civil war between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The latest restrictions follow news reports that as many as 1,000 government troops may have been killed […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – The following is a CPJ letter to Minister of Information Goran Matic: **Updates IFEX alerts on the Curuvija case of 19 April, 13 April, 12 April, 15 March, 12 March, 10 March, 9 March and 8 March 1999; for additional information see IFEX alerts of 28 October, 27 October, 20 October, 18 October, […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – CPJ is greatly alarmed by a murder attempt and series of death threats against Sergei Zhubinsky, a reporter with the privately-owned local XXI Vek television station in Achinsk, in the Krasnoyarsk region. In early May, Zhubinsky began receiving anonymous telephone calls threatening him and his family. The callers ordered Zhubinsky to stop broadcasting […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – CPJ is gravely concerned by the death of Supian Ependiyev, a veteran correspondent for the independent Chechnya weekly “Groznenskiy Rabochiy”, in a recent rocket attack on the Chechen capital, Grozny. **Updates IFEX alert of 1 November 1999** On the evening of 27 October 1999, several rockets hit a crowded outdoor market in central […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – Reuters stringer Henry Romero, kidnapped by the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) on 26 October 1999 as punishment for having published a photo of a rebel commander’s face, was freed near the town of Suárez. He reached his hometown, Cali, at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday evening, after walking and riding for two days. **Updates […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – Seven cameramen and reporters kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were released on 2 November 1999. **Updates IFEX alerts of 2 November and 28 October 1999** The journalists were set free in the afternoon of 2 November near Barrancabermeja, an important oil-refining center. Concern for the journalists’ safety had been […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – Jerry Needam, acting editor of the bimonthly “Ogoni Star” newspaper in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, was arraigned and released on bail on 2 November 1999. Needam had been held since 11 October in connection with the publication of a police operational order that detailed a planned clampdown on ethnic Ijaw activists […]