MANILA — The International Observer Mission-Nueva Ecija team saw today how militarization in Barangay Yuson and Manggang Marikit, Guimba, Nueva Ecija has resulted in a new type of disenfranchisement of voters.
Today the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the European group of the International Federation of Journalists, condemned the attempt by a French judge to access files at the headquarters of French satirical weekly Canard encha?n? and called for a joint European approach to protect journalists? confidential sources.
Military overstepped their authority, Peoples’ IOM delegates say
MANILA — Soldiers from the 78th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army twice stopped and harassed delegates of the Peoples’ International Observers Mission (Peoples’ IOM) at a checkpoint in the northwestern coast of Cebu this afternoon.
The Peoples’ IOM team in Cebu included foreign observers Elizabeth Hendrickson from the English Lutheran Church in the United States and Minerva Gutierrez, a member of the political party Quebec Solidaire in Canada.
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MANILA — The umbrella group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan today scored the Commission on Elections and the Philippine National Police for its ?seeming disregard of the reality of rampant fraud and violence marring the 2007 elections.?
?The PNP and the Comelec continue to paint a rosy picture of the elections. There is hardly any recognition of the gravity of the problems of violence, disenfranchisement, vote-buying and outright vote manipulation. How can they say that the elections are peaceful when more than 100 have died and the death count is expected to get higher?? said Bayan chair Carol Araullo.
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MANILA — The International Federation of Journalists today joined Russian journalists in a protest over official harassment of independent media just two weeks before the IFJ world congress opens in Moscow with a special focus on the crisis conditions facing media staff in the country. The IFJ condemned a police raid on the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and the detention of a number of journalists in a separate incident in the town of Samara on 11 May. The raid took place one week before a planned demonstration in Samara by the political opposition group ‘Other Russia’.
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