Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

Javier Osuna has been the victim of information thefts, break-in attempts and intimidation. All while being ‘protected’ by Colombia’s UNP.

In FARDC operations on 8 May, soldiers raided Radio Umoja and Radio Baraka – both based in Baraka, a city near Fizi – in search of journalists who had broadcast an appeal by civil society groups for a two-day general strike in the city in protest against violent crime.

During the ten months they were held hostage, they were moved six times by their abductors. They were kept together for the first three months but then Pampliega was separated from the other two.

An Istanbul court convicted Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya for “inciting hatred and hostility” of a religious nature for reproducing the cover cartoon of the Charlie Hebdo “Survivors Issue,” the first issue published after the January 2015 attack on the Paris-based magazine.

In the April round-up: horrific attacks against secularists in Bangladesh, journalists arrested while protesting criminal defamation in the Maldives, crackdown on opposing voices in Cambodia, plus advocacy, awards and much more.

RSF is publishing a report about media freedom in Hong Kong, where self-censorship and editorial interference have been growing steadily in recent years and where another newspaper editor was summarily dismissed two weeks ago.

Human rights defender Somyot Phrueksakasemsuk is currently incarcerated in Bangkok’s Remand Prison, where he is serving a 10-year sentence following his conviction on charges of lèse-majesté.

ARTA FM suffered a hard blow on 26 April after its director was ambushed, interrogated and threatened with death. Before making their escape, the masked gunmen responsible for his attack also set the radio station itself on fire and destroyed some of its equipment.