Watchdog

The Almaty-based independent media-rights organization Adil Soz has announced that Kazakh journalist Lukpan Akhmedyarov has won the Peter Mackler Award for Courageous and Ethical Journalism.

The award "honors reporters and editors who have demonstrated a commitment to fairness in the story well told, and a matching commitment to defending the right to publish and air that story in countries who repress independent media."

The award is given by the Global Media Forum Training Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to journalism training, and the U.S. branch of the press-freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

In April, Akhmedyarov, a correspondent for the "Uralskaya nedelya" weekly in the western city of Oral, was attacked by unknown assailants who stabbed him and shot him with a pneumatic pistol.

He later was found guilty of insulting a local official in West Kazakhstan Oblast and ordered to pay the official 5 million tenges ($33,000).

Akhmedyarov says the attack and lawsuit against him were politically motivated.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) representative on media freedom, Dunja Mijatovic, has asked the Belarusian authorities to drop charges against a blogger.

Mijatovic's appeal was for Anton Surapin, who faces up to seven years in prison for uploading photos of teddy bears that had been dropped by plane into Belarus.

Surapin was arrested last month after posting photos of bears dropped from a Swedish plane in the Minsk area accompanied by texts supporting Belarusian dissidents and the country’s opposition.

Belarus expelled the Swedish ambassador last week and announced on August 8 it was withdrawing all staff from the Belarusian Embassy in Stockholm over the incident.

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry also told Stockholm to withdraw its diplomats in Minsk.