Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

(CPJ/IFEX) – On 27 November 1997, at about 9:30 am, J. Jesus Blancornelas, co-director of the Tijuana weekly “Zeta”, was shot during a shootout with unknown assailants. Blancornelas’s driver and bodyguard, Luis Lauro Valero, was killed in the attack. One of the alleged attackers was also reported to have been killed and identified by police. […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – Maya Klimenkova, a justice for the Supreme Commercial Court of Belarus, ordered the immediate shutdown of “Svaboda”, one of the largest and most popular independent newspapers in the country, during a 25 November 1997 court hearing over charges issued by the State Press Committee that the newspaper had violated the country’s press law. […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – On 11 October 1997, the Ministry of Information confiscated all issues of the 30 September – 15 October edition of the official bi-weekly “Ma’in” and banned its publication indefinitely. The action appears to have been taken in retaliation for an editorial written by chief editor Abdel Fattah Al-Hakimi titled “From the Revolution of […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – Pavel Zhuk, publisher of the thrice-weekly Minsk opposition newspaper “Svaboda”, told CPJ that members of the government administration informed his editorial staff on 20 November that President Lukashenko has issued an order to close down the paper. On 20 November, the paper received fresh warnings from the State Press Committee that it could […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – Leading Indonesian independent journalist Ahmad Taufik will receive the International Press Freedom Award of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on 19 November 1997 – the award he was unable to accept in 1995 because he was serving a three-year sentence in Indonesia for publishing articles critical of the Suharto regime. CPJ’s Asia […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – Luis Ronaldo De Leon Godoy, head of the weekend supplements section of the leading daily “Prensa Libre”, was stabbed on the morning of 14 November 1997 as he was leaving his house in central Guatemala City. Eyewitnesses report that De Leon’s assailants had been waiting in a car near his house for approximately […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – CPJ welcomed the release on 16 November 1997 of Chinese writer and leading dissident Wei Jingsheng as a positive development for journalists and writers in China. **Updates IFEX alerts of 28 and 21 October, 29 August, 1 July 1997 and others** “Obviously, this is good news and the Chinese government is to be […]

(CPJ/IFEX) – CPJ welcomed the release on 16 November 1997 of Chinese writer and leading dissident Wei Jingsheng as a positive development for journalists and writers in China. **Updates IFEX alerts of 28 and 21 October, 29 August, 1 July 1997 and others** “Obviously, this is good news and the Chinese government is to be […]