Iran today confirmed the arrest of Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, his wife Yeganeh Salehi and two unnamed U.S. citizens who work with him as photojournalists. Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Gholam-Hossein Esmaili, Director General of the Tehran Province Justice Department, as saying no further information will be released about Rezaian until “technical investigations” […]

  ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,’ says Marcellus in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, famously. That story didn’t end so well, but at least someone knew there was a problem. Swaziland’s King Mswati III is not so self-aware – or perhaps he’s just masking the stench with the new leather in his fancy cars and […]

One of the first thoughts I had when I woke up this morning was that today was going to be the day that we would finally hear the fate of three Al Jazeera journalists, Egyptian-Canadian acting Cairo bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy, Australian reporter Peter Greste and Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed, who, along with 17 others, have […]

  Reporters Without Borders (RSF) this week announced a journalist was killed covering the offensive against the Iran-backed Shiaa government of Nouri Al-Maliki in Iraq by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as ISIL) and other Iraqi Sunni groups. Khaled Ali Hamada, an Al-Ahad TV cameraman died Monday in the eastern […]

  While the world’s are fixed on the 2014 FIFA World Cup games underway in Brazil, the global association of writers PEN International has launched an internet campaign calling on Brazil and eleven other countries participating in this year’s football games to respect and protect free expression. The campaign calls on PEN members and everyone […]

Media rights groups are expressing outrage and calling on the Thai junta to release two journalists  arrested last week after the military declared martial law on that country. The Bangkok Post reports Pravit Rojanaphruk, a journalist with the daily Nation, was summoned to the headquarters of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) where […]

The government of Pakistan is expelling two Indian journalists, a move that New Delhi calls a “retrograde step.” Press Trust of India‘s (PTI) Snehesh Alex Philip and The Hindu‘s Meena Menon received letters late Tuesday evening from the Pakistan government’s External Publicity Wing notifying them that it would not extend their visas and giving them […]

Lawyers and human rights activists in Pakistan are mourning the murder of a prominent human rights lawyer who was gunned down in his office May 8th by unknown assailants. Rashid Rehman, 53, was the lawyer representing Junaid Hafeez, the Bahauddin Zakariya University lecturer is accused of spreading blasphemy — it is unclear whether he actually […]