“There are already a dozen cases piling up against me,” she said. “I’m a journalist. One murder case is enough to frame me.”

Rupa, a former chief correspondent at privately owned broadcaster Ekattor TV, now faces nine murder cases. Her husband, Shakil Ahmed, the channel’s former head of news, is named in eight.  

A year ago, Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge of Bangladesh’s interim government after Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country following weeks of student-led protests, during which two journalists were killed.

Yunus promised media reform and repealed the Cyber Security Act, a law used to target journalists under Hasina. But in a November 2024 interview with newspaper The Daily Star, Yunus said that murder accusations against journalists were being made hastily. He said the government had since halted such actions and that a committee had been formed to review the cases.

Still, nearly a year later, Rupa, Ahmed, Shyamal Dutta and Mozammel Haque Babu, arrested on accusations of instigating murders in separate cases, remain behind bars. The repeated use of such charges against journalists who are widely seen as sympathetic to the former regime appear to be politically motivated censorship.

In addition to such legal charges, CPJ has documented physical attacks against journalists, threats from political activists, and exile. At least 25 journalists are under investigation for genocide by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal – a charge that has been used to target figures linked to the former Hasina government. 

“Keeping four journalists behind bars without credible evidence a year on undermines the interim government’s stated commitment to protect press freedom,” said CPJ Regional Director Beh Lih Yi. “Real reform means breaking from the past, not replicating its abuses. All political parties must respect journalists’ right to report as the country is set for polls in coming months.”

A CPJ review of legal documents and reports found that journalists are often added to First Information Reports (FIRs) – documents that open an investigation – long after they are filed. In May, UN experts raised concern that over 140 journalists had been charged with murder following last year’s protests.

Shyamal Dutta’s daughter, Shashi, told CPJ the family has lost track of how many cases he now faces. They are aware of at least six murder cases in which he is named, while Babu’s family is aware of 10. Rupa and Ahmed’s family told CPJ that they haven’t received FIRs for five cases in which one or the other journalist has been named, which means that neither can apply for bail.

Shafiqul Alam, Yunus’s press secretary, and police spokesperson Enamul Haque Sagor did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment. 

Violence and threats

In 2025, reporters across Bangladesh have faced violence and harassment while covering political events, with CPJ documenting at least 10 such incidents, most of which were carried out by members or affiliates of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its student wing, Chhatra Dal. In several instances, journalists sustained serious injuries or were prevented from reporting after footage was deleted or phones seized, including Bahar Raihan, Abdullah Al Mahmud, and Rocky Hossain.

Responding to the allegations, Mahdi Amin, adviser to Acting BNP Chair Tarique Rahman, told CPJ that while isolated misconduct may occur in a party of BNP’s size, the party does not protect wrongdoers. 

Others have faced threats from supporters of different political parties and the student groups that led the protests against Hasina. Reporters covering opposition groups like Jamaat-e-Islami or its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, have come under particular pressure. On June 9, Hasanat Kamal, editor of EyeNews.news, told CPJ he’d fled to the United Kingdom after being falsely accused by Islami Chhatra Shibir of participating in a violent student protest. Anwar Hossain, a journalist for the local daily Dabanol, told CPJ he’d been threatened by Jamaat supporters after publishing negative reports about a local party leader. 

CPJ reached out via messaging app to Abdus Sattar Sumon, a spokesperson for Jamaat-e-Islami, but received no response.

Since Hasina’s ouster, student protesters from the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement (ADSM) have increasinglytargeted journalists they accuse of supporting the former regime, which in one case led to the firing of five journalists. Student-led mobs have also besieged outlets like Prothom Alo and The Daily Star. 

CPJ reached out via messaging app to ADSM leader Rifat Rashid but received no response.

On July 14, exiled investigative journalist Zulkarnain Saer Khan, who fled Bangladesh after exposing alleged high-level corruption under Hasina and receiving threats from Awami League officials, posted on X about the repression of the media: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Kunal Majumder/CPJ India Representative.

“It is a grave injustice that Sandra Muhoza remains behind bars two months after an appeal court effectively invalidated her earlier trial and conviction,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities must do the right thing and release Muhoza without further delay.”

In December 2024, Mukaza High Court, in eastern Bujumbura province, convicted Muhoza of undermining the integrity of Burundi’s national territory and inciting ethnic hatred, in connection with comments she made in a journalists’ WhatsApp group, and sentenced her 21 months in prison.

The Bujumbura Mairie Court of Appeal, in a May 30, 2025judgment reviewed by CPJ, said that it and the lower court lacked the jurisdiction to hear Muhoza’s case. It cited a law on judicial procedures, which stipulates that a defendant should be tried by a court in the region where they were arrested, live, or where the crime was allegedly committed. 

Muhoza was arrested in the northern Ngozi region where she lived. The appeal court ordered that the case be referred to a competent court.

Burundian authorities have previously convicted other journalists for anti-state crimes, such as Floriane Irangabiye, who in 2023 was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of undermining the integrity of the national territory. She was released in August 2024, following a presidential pardon.

CPJ’s emails to the justice ministry, and text messages to justice minister Domine Banyankimbona, interior ministry spokesperson Pierre Nkurikiye, Prosecutor General’s Office spokesperson Agnès Bagiricenge, and government spokesperson Jérôme Niyonzima did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

On June 28, 2025, Baroshky’s lawyer, Reving Yaseen, informed CPJ that the court had reactivated a previously suspended six-month sentence from December 2021, citing a violation of its conditions — Baroshky was convicted in January of defamation over a January 2024 Facebook post. Baroshky, who is the director of privately owned Rast Media, was originally set to be released on July 31, after serving a six-month sentence for that conviction.

“The use of overlapping defamation charges and suspended sentences to keep journalists behind bars has become a dangerous pattern for press freedom in Iraqi Kurdistan,” said Doja Daoud, CPJ’s Levant program coordinator. “Omed Baroshky has already faced retaliation for his reporting. We urge Iraqi Kurdish authorities to stop criminalizing the work of opposition journalists and ensure that they can operate without fear of reprisal.”

According to Yaseen, Baroshky was sentenced in 2021 under the Misuse of Communication Devices law, following a lawsuit filed by then-Kurdish lawmaker Mala Ihsan Rekani. The case stemmed from Baroshky’s reporting that Rekani had returned to the Kurdistan Region without undergoing the required COVID-19 quarantine procedures, “but the sentence was suspended on the condition that he not commit any offense for three years,” he said. “The court has now ruled that his 2025 defamation conviction breached that condition and ordered that he serve the full 2021 sentence in addition to the current term.” 

CPJ called Aram Atrushi, the director of Zirka prison, where Omed is detained, for comment, but did not receive a response.

Baroshky previously served 18 months in prison between 2020 and 2022 under the same law because of social media posts critical of Iraqi Kurdish authorities. After Rast Media was raided and forcibly shut down in April 2023, he shifted his reporting to Facebook, which became his primary platform for publishing.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Zamora was arrested in 2022 following a raid in which he was not informed of the charges against him. In less than 72 hours, authorities fabricated charges of money laundering, blackmail, and influence peddling. His first hearing, however, did not take place within the 24-hour legal timeframe after his detention, marking the beginning of a judicial process plagued by irregularities.

Since then, the Guatemalan Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened three baseless criminal cases against Zamora, systematically violating his rights to due process, legal defense, and the presumption of innocence. The prosecution and judicial system have acted in bad faith, building a case designed to send a message that critical journalism will be silenced in the country.

This date now marks, in practice, the fulfillment of a sentence for crimes he did not commit.

The persecution did not stop with Zamora: Since his arrest, elPeriódico’s newsroom has faced relentless legal and financial attacks, ultimately leading to the newspaper’s closure. A criminal investigation was opened against nine additional journalists on staff and the remaining members of his family were threatened with criminal charges and forced into exile.  

Despite favorable rulings that have exposed the abuse of power by certain judicial entities, and despite international recognition from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and UN experts that his detention is arbitrary – and that he has been exposed to forms of torture – Jose Rubén Zamora remains behind bars.

The signatory organizations demand his immediate release, the full restoration of his fundamental human rights, and an end to his political persecution.

Signatory organizations

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Protection International Mesoamérica
Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR)
Freedom House
Article 19 México y Centroamérica
Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP)
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
IFEX-ALC
Latin American Working Group (LAWG)

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

An Emmy-winning, Spanish-language journalist, Guevara was arrested on First Amendment-related charges— that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press — while livestreaming a “No Kings” protest against the Trump administration in a suburb of Atlanta. 

“It is imperative that journalist Mario Guevara be released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention without delay,” said CPJ U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “With Guevara unable to report, a vital perspective on immigration issues has been lost. Guevara’s ongoing detention under the threat of deportation is a gross overreach of ICE authority and a crude form of censorship.” 

Representatives from the advocacy group Free Press, the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia, Guevara’s lawyer, Giovanni Diaz, the journalist’s son and daughter, Oscar and Katherine Guevara, and CPJ Regional Director, Americas, José Zamora also spoke at Tuesday’s news conference at the Georgia State House.

Speakers made the following comments: 

• “We’re living in a climate of fear and retribution in which our community ties weaken and truth is undermined as the bedrock of our democracy,” said Nora Benavidez, Free Press’s senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights. “Mr. Guevara’s case is just the tip of the spear. So in pushing back today, we are not just calling for Mr. Guevara’s immediate release. His detention sends a chilling message to anyone who might want to exercise their rights. And it’s a rejection of the premise this country was founded on: to give people agency, dignity, autonomy and freedom to challenge those in power.”

• “We are stuck in a nightmare,” said Katherine Guevara, Mario’s daughter. “We don’t know how to explain how something like this could even happen. The pain we feel is indescribable. This is not just about one journalist. This is about what kind of country we want to be.”

• “The protections of the First Amendment extend to everyone regardless of citizenship status,” said Andrés M. López-Delgado, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Georgia. “The ACLU of Georgia is deeply concerned about Mario’s case and what it means for where we’re headed as a state and as a country. Journalists should not have to be concerned that they will face deportation or other retaliation when they are just trying to do their jobs reporting on matters of grave and deep public concern.”

On June 25, three initial charges of unlawful assembly, obstruction, and being a pedestrian on the roadway were dismissed due to insufficient evidence. On July 10, the remaining three charges that were filed after Guevara was already in ICE detention — reckless driving, failure to obey traffic signs, and unlawful use of a telecommunication device — were also dismissed due to insufficient evidence and legal deficiencies. 

Guevara is currently the only journalist in custody in the U.S. whose arrest was in relation to his work.

Guevara has lawfully resided in the U.S. for over 20 years and developed a large following in the Atlanta area, as well as national recognition, for his reporting on immigration issues. He frequently filmed ICE and law enforcement raids.

See CPJ’s timeline of Guevara’s arrest and detention proceedings here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

A CPJ investigation found Bassène could never have committed the crime, yet Senegal’s Supreme Court dismissed Bassène’s final appeal of a life sentence on May 3, 2025. Bassène was finalizing a fourth book on the separatist conflict in southern Senegal at the time of his arrest.

“As a son of Casamance, I wrote out of duty, for posterity so that the history of this conflict would not disappear from the collective memory and that it would never happen again,” said Bassène from the Aristide Le Dantec hospital in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, where he underwent a June 4 to repair an eardrum perforated during his arrest. He added, “I thank from the bottom of my heart all the signatories who believe in my innocence and are fighting for my release.”

Read the full letter in English here and in French here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

In response to the hearing, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), International Press Institute (IPI), and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) – called on Monday for Amaglobeli’s immediate release. Ambassadors and diplomats from the European Union mission and seven countries also attended the hearing, in which Amaglobeli provided detailed testimony for nearly three hours.

A prominent  journalist and founder of the online news outlets Gazeti Batumelebi and Netgazeti, Amaglobeli has been unjustly held in pretrial detention since her arrest on January 12.

“Today’s proceedings show that the trial of Mzia Amaglobeli is shrouded in a shocking smear campaign to destroy her credibility, personally and as a journalist. This, along with her deteriorating health, is deeply troubling and must end. Amaglobeli’s powerful testimony reflects her deep commitment to Georgia and to a free and independent media. Journalism is not a crime.”  

— Gypsy Guillén Kaiser, Chief Global Affairs Officer, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

“The proceedings we witnessed today only confirm our position that this charge against Mzia Amaglobeli is entirely disproportionate and must be dropped. We are also deeply concerned by what appears to be an effort to smear her and to call into question her credibility as a journalist. Mzia is a highly respected, veteran journalist known for her commitment to journalistic ethics and independence. We fully stand by her as an IPI member.”

 — Amy Brouillette, Director of Advocacy, International Press Institute (IPI).

“This hearing once again underlined the lack of foundation in this case. The defense pointed to serious procedural irregularities, including politically charged that should have no place in an ongoing trial. Video footage also called into question the credibility of the alleged victim. Mzia Amaglobeli gave a calm and determined testimony, recalling her arrest and reaffirming her commitment to independent journalism — values for which she is now being prosecuted.”

— Jeanne Cavelier, Head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk

Amaglobeli has been charged under the criminal code with attacking a police officer – a charge widely viewed as excessive and politically motivated – which carries a sentence of up to seven years in prison. She has been held in pre-trial detention since January 12, during which time her health has declined and she has been struggling with deteriorating vision.

She is being held at the Rustavi Women’s Prison No. 5, south of the capital Tbilisi. CPJ, IPI, and RSF visited the prison site and stood outside in a gesture of solidarity on July 13. The court’s verdict on this case could be announced at a subsequent hearing, set for July 28.

Amaglobeli is the first woman journalist to be jailed since the country gained its independence in 1991. A widely respected figure known for upholding the highest journalistic standards, her arrest and detention are seen by many in the journalism community in Georgia as a deliberate attempt to intimidate and silence the independent press amidst a broader crackdown on civil society and dissent. Last week, 17 European foreign ministers and the European Union’s High Representative, expressed deep concern regarding “increasing repression” in Georgia.

The outlets founded by Amaglobeli nearly 25 years ago, have reported on human rights violations and corruption, serving the public with impartial, trustworthy news. These outlets have endured four political regimes in Georgia’s post-independence era, despite their journalists and editors being attacked, threatened, blackmailed and detained by authorities. 

Amaglobeli’s detention this January comes amid growing harassment of independent media in Georgia and a broader scaling back of democratic freedoms under the Georgian Dream ruling party. Over the past year, journalists in Georgia have been beaten, harassed, detained, jailed, smeared, and fined. Impunity for attacks on journalists, including those perpetrated by police, remains widespread. A wave of repressive legislation – such as the foreign agents law as well as amendments to the Law on Grants and the Law of Broadcasting – deliberately aims to prevent independent media from operating in Georgia. 

As members of the Media Freedom Coalition’s Consultative Network, CPJ, IPI and RSF have urged robust action regarding Amaglobeli’s detention, along with broader concerns about escalating attacks on press freedom that can weaken democracy in Georgia. 

Read more: CPJ’s remarks during a site visit to Rustavi Women’s Prison on July 13, 2025

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

In response to the hearing, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), International Press Institute (IPI), and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) – called on Monday for Amaglobeli’s immediate release. Ambassadors and diplomats from the European Union mission and seven countries also attended the hearing, in which Amaglobeli provided detailed testimony for nearly three hours.

A prominent  journalist and founder of the online news outlets Gazeti Batumelebi and Netgazeti, Amaglobeli has been unjustly held in pretrial detention since her arrest on January 12.

“Today’s proceedings show that the trial of Mzia Amaglobeli is shrouded in a shocking smear campaign to destroy her credibility, personally and as a journalist. This, along with her deteriorating health, is deeply troubling and must end. Amaglobeli’s powerful testimony reflects her deep commitment to Georgia and to a free and independent media. Journalism is not a crime.”  

— Gypsy Guillén Kaiser, Chief Global Affairs Officer, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

“The proceedings we witnessed today only confirm our position that this charge against Mzia Amaglobeli is entirely disproportionate and must be dropped. We are also deeply concerned by what appears to be an effort to smear her and to call into question her credibility as a journalist. Mzia is a highly respected, veteran journalist known for her commitment to journalistic ethics and independence. We fully stand by her as an IPI member.”

 — Amy Brouillette, Director of Advocacy, International Press Institute (IPI).

“This hearing once again underlined the lack of foundation in this case. The defense pointed to serious procedural irregularities, including politically charged that should have no place in an ongoing trial. Video footage also called into question the credibility of the alleged victim. Mzia Amaglobeli gave a calm and determined testimony, recalling her arrest and reaffirming her commitment to independent journalism — values for which she is now being prosecuted.”

— Jeanne Cavelier, Head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk

Amaglobeli has been charged under the criminal code with attacking a police officer – a charge widely viewed as excessive and politically motivated – which carries a sentence of up to seven years in prison. She has been held in pre-trial detention since January 12, during which time her health has declined and she has been struggling with deteriorating vision.

She is being held at the Rustavi Women’s Prison No. 5, south of the capital Tbilisi. CPJ, IPI, and RSF visited the prison site and stood outside in a gesture of solidarity on July 13. The court’s verdict on this case could be announced at a subsequent hearing, set for July 28.

Amaglobeli is the first woman journalist to be jailed since the country gained its independence in 1991. A widely respected figure known for upholding the highest journalistic standards, her arrest and detention are seen by many in the journalism community in Georgia as a deliberate attempt to intimidate and silence the independent press amidst a broader crackdown on civil society and dissent. Last week, 17 European foreign ministers and the European Union’s High Representative, expressed deep concern regarding “increasing repression” in Georgia.

The outlets founded by Amaglobeli nearly 25 years ago, have reported on human rights violations and corruption, serving the public with impartial, trustworthy news. These outlets have endured four political regimes in Georgia’s post-independence era, despite their journalists and editors being attacked, threatened, blackmailed and detained by authorities. 

Amaglobeli’s detention this January comes amid growing harassment of independent media in Georgia and a broader scaling back of democratic freedoms under the Georgian Dream ruling party. Over the past year, journalists in Georgia have been beaten, harassed, detained, jailed, smeared, and fined. Impunity for attacks on journalists, including those perpetrated by police, remains widespread. A wave of repressive legislation – such as the foreign agents law as well as amendments to the Law on Grants and the Law of Broadcasting – deliberately aims to prevent independent media from operating in Georgia. 

As members of the Media Freedom Coalition’s Consultative Network, CPJ, IPI and RSF have urged robust action regarding Amaglobeli’s detention, along with broader concerns about escalating attacks on press freedom that can weaken democracy in Georgia. 

Read more: CPJ’s remarks during a site visit to Rustavi Women’s Prison on July 13, 2025

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The statement warns that Decree-Law 54 has become the government’s primary tool for targeting dissent, with Dahmani facing five separate cases for political commentary, three of which have already resulted in convictions. A fourth case, in which charges have been escalated to criminal offenses carrying a possible 10-year sentence, is scheduled for a key hearing on July 11. The statement also expressed deep concern about the harsh prison conditions faced by Dahmani. 

Her sister, Ramla Dahmani, was also sentenced in absentia to two years in prison for advocating for the journalist’s release on social media.

Organizations can still sign the statement here until Thursday, July 17.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Telemundo Atlanta reported on Monday morning that the activist group Indivisible had scheduled a protest for 6 p.m. that day at the jail.

“We are dismayed that immigration officials have decided to ignore a federal immigration court order last week granting bail to journalist Mario Guevara,” said CPJ U.S., Canada and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “Guevara is currently the only jailed journalist in the United States who was arrested in relation to his work. Immigration authorities must respect the law and release him on bail instead of bouncing him from one jurisdiction to another.”

The journalist, who was initially arrested while covering a June 14 “No Kings” protest in the Atlanta metro area and charged with three misdemeanors, which local officials declined to prosecute due to insufficient evidence. A local judge ordered Guevara to be released on bond, but he remained in custody after ICE opened a detainer against him.

The Department of Homeland Security headquarters and the department’s Atlanta field office did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Dahmani’s lawyers withdrew from Monday’s trial to protest that the court was illegally trying her twice for the same act, the journalist’s sister, Ramla Dahmani, told CPJ, referring to the legal principle of double jeopardy.

“Handing Tunisian lawyer and media commentator Sonia Dahmani an additional two-year sentence, on top of her existing term for the same media commentary, is not only harsh, but appears to be a targeted effort to silence her personally,” said CPJ Chief Programs Officer Carlos Martínez de la Serna. “Tunisian authorities must drop all charges against Dahmani and ensure that journalists can make political commentary without being targeted.”

In October 2024, Dahman, who is also a prominent lawyer, received a two-year sentence under Decree 54 on cybercrime on charges of spreading “false” news for commenting on the local independent radio station IFM about the mistreatment of sub-Saharan Africans in Tunisia.

The court said that the second sentence on June 30 was for her comments to a second outlet, the television channel Carthage Plus.

In September 2024, Dahmani was given an eight-month sentence following her May arrest over separate comments she made on Carthage Plus, where she criticized Tunisia’s living conditions and discussed immigration.

Her case is widely seen as part of a broader crackdown on journalists, opposition figures, and government critics that has intensified since President Kais Saied suspended parliament in 2021 and introduced a new constitution, giving himself nearly unchecked power.

According to CPJ’s latest annual prison census, at least five journalists were behind bars in Tunisia on December 1, 2024, the highest number since 1992.

CPJ’s email to the Presidency requesting comment did not receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Gleizes was arrested on May 28, 2024, in the town of Tizi Ouzou, about 60 miles east of the capital, Algiers, following an interview with a football club president who is allegedly affiliated with the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie, an opposition group founded in 2003 that supports autonomy for the northern Kabylie region. Algerian authorities have classified the group as a terrorist organization since 2021. 

“Sentencing French journalist Christophe Gleizes to seven years in prison on terrorism charges over an interview is a clear indication of the government’s intolerance of press freedom,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Regional Director Sara Qudah. “Algerian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Gleizes, and drop all charges against him.”

Gleizes, who has contributed to French sports magazines So Foot and Society, traveled to Algeria in 2023 to report on JS Kabylie, a prominent football team in the Kabylie region. His detention was not revealed until his sentencing was announced on Sunday.

In a statement, France’s foreign affairs ministry called the sentence “harsh,” said it had requested consular access to Gleizes in prison, and said Gleizes will appeal the sentence.

Gleizes’ conviction comes amid escalating tensions between France and Algeria over migration, extradition, and France’s position on Western Sahara, which is that the area should be under Moroccan, not Algerian, sovereignty.

CPJ’s email to the Algerian Ministry of the Interior seeking comment on Gleizes’ sentencing did not receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

It was the first time that Cumpio’s words have been heard outside her prison cell in Tacloban City in the eastern Philippines. Cumpio was arrested in February 2020 and later charged over illegal possession of firearms and terrorism financing.

She faces up to 40 years in prison if found guilty.

“How do we even combat a well-orchestrated lie? A story that’s so absurd that if this was a class debate, you wouldn’t even try to rebut,” Cumpio said in her letter, which Khan read on Tuesday at a U.N. Human Rights Council side event about freedom of expression in the Philippines, co-hosted by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Cumpio’s letter was hand-carried to Khan in Geneva from the Philippines by CPJ’s Asia-Pacific
director Beh Lih Yi. Ronalyn Olea, secretary-general of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) was also present when the letter was handed over.

Khan, the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion, called for Cumpio’s release at the U.N. on Tuesday and in her report to the UNHRC last week.

In 2024, the U.N. expert made an official visit to Cumpio and her co-accused Marielle Domequil, a church lay worker, in prison.

“She has been languishing in prison for five years, waiting for a trial for five years — that to me is a travesty of justice,” Khan said on Tuesday. “We need to stand with the Frenchies of this world.”

CPJ and the NUJP are part of the international #FreeFrenchieMaeCumpio coalition which includes the media rights groups AlterMidya, Reporters Without Borders, and Free Press Unlimited. The coalition was denied a joint prison visit to Cumpio in Tacloban City on June 16, with authorities citing documentary requirements.

Below is the extract from Cumpio’s letter read out by Khan:

“A lot has happened over a year [since Khan met Cumpio]. Marielle and I have already testified in court. I was presented three times. I am pleased to tell you that our lawyers have really exerted all of their efforts for our testimony.

Despite that I have to admit that nothing can really prepare you for your own trial.

At first, it felt like I didn’t really have anything to say. How do we even combat a well-orchestrated lie? A story that’s so absurd that if this was a class debate, you wouldn’t even try to rebut.

But after my testimony, I realised I still had a lot to say. That this more than five years of detention is robbing us of so many things — time, family, dreams, plans, future.

People call us brave for holding on, although I would have to admit I sometimes feel otherwise.

The truth is that what happened to us still happens to several others. The fact that they are capable of charging us through mere lies. The fear that we still won’t be safe even when we’re out of this facility.

I am never an ‘in between’ person. I am usually sure where I stand. But today, now that we’re almost near the end, I feel uncertain. And uncertainty bothers you in bed.

Nonetheless, we hold on.

Your visit last year has made a huge impact on how people perceive our case.

Thank you for amplifying our woes. Nothing is braver than fighting for those who are uncertain – the economically challenged, those who continue to suffer from discrimination, or people like us who are locked behind bars.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“Fatih Altaylı’s arrest is a blatant attempt to intimidate an influential commentator into self-censorship,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Authorities should immediately release Altaylı, stop targeting critical voices, and allow journalists to do their job without fear of reprisal.” 

On June 20, Altaylı—who regularly shares content to his 1.5 million YouTube subscribers and 2.8 million X followers—commented on a public poll in which 70% of Turkish voters indicated that they preferred to vote for another leader after Erdoğan, who won’t be eligible to run in the country’s 2028 elections due to a two-term limit. In his commentary, Altaylı said the Turkish people “love the ballot box” and wouldn’t want to abandon the right to determine their own future. He added, “This nation is a nation that strangled their sultan when they didn’t like things; didn’t want him. A nation that booed their sultan.”

In his testimony to the authorities, Altaylı said he didn’t threaten the president but merely voiced well known historical facts, and his comments meant to underline how the Turkish people value democracy. 

On Monday, a video of an empty chair was uploaded to Altaylı’s channel in protest of his arrest, which has been viewed more than 788,000 times. 

CPJ’s emailed request for comment on Altaylı’s arrest from the chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul did not receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Sebastien Lai has sought a meeting with Starmer for more than two years to advocate for the release of his father, 77-year-old Jimmy Lai, who founded Apple Daily. His health is deteriorating and he risks dying in jail.

Lai has been imprisoned for over 1,600 days, mostly in isolation, while awaiting the outcome of a long-delayed trial for sedition and conspiring to collude with foreign forces under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law. After Lai’s arrest in 2020, Apple Daily was shuttered on June 24, 2021, following police raids and the freezing of the paper’s assets.

Read the full joint letter here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CP Staff.

Russia freed Yesypenko on June 20 after he served a five-year prison sentence on charges of possessing and transporting explosives, which he denied. Karnei, detained for nearly 2 years, was released along with 13 political prisoners, including opposition figure Siarhei Tsikhanouski. The 14 were freed by Belarus on June 21 following a visit to Minsk by senior U.S. official Keith Kellogg, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general.

“CPJ celebrates that Vladislav Yesypenko and Ihar Karnei are now free and reunited with their families,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “The efforts and pressure of the international community must not stop here, as Russia and Belarus continue to hold dozens of journalists in connection with their work. They all should be released immediately.” 

Russian Federal Security Service officers detained Yesypenko, a freelance correspondent for Krym.Realii, a Crimea-focused outlet run by U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in March 2021 in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea. He was initially sentenced to six years in prison, but the term was reduced by a year on appeal in August 2022.

Karnei, a former freelancer with RFE/RL, was detained in July 2023 and sentenced to three years in March 2024 on charges of participating in an extremist group — the Belarusian Association of Journalists, which had been the largest independent media association in the country until it was dissolved in 2021 and later labeled an extremist group. His sentence was extended by eight months in December 2024.

“RFE/RL extends its deepest gratitude to the U.S. and Ukrainian governments for working with us to ensure that Vlad’s unjust detention was not prolonged,” RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus said in a statement.

Karnei and Yesypenko’s releases come after sustained international pressure, including from CPJ, and after Andrey Kuznechyk, another RFE/RL journalist, was freed from a Belarusian prison in February.

Belarus is Europe’s worst jailer of journalists, with at least 31 behind bars as of December 1, 2024. Thirteen of the 30 journalists still detained by Russia are Ukrainian. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Lauren Wolfe.

Russia freed Yesypenko on June 20 after he served a five-year prison sentence on charges of possessing and transporting explosives, which he denied. Karnei, detained for nearly 2 years, was released along with 13 political prisoners, including opposition figure Siarhei Tsikhanouski. The 14 were freed by Belarus on June 21 following a visit to Minsk by senior U.S. official Keith Kellogg, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general.

“CPJ celebrates that Vladislav Yesypenko and Ihar Karnei are now free and reunited with their families,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “The efforts and pressure of the international community must not stop here, as Russia and Belarus continue to hold dozens of journalists in connection with their work. They all should be released immediately.” 

Russian Federal Security Service officers detained Yesypenko, a freelance correspondent for Krym.Realii, a Crimea-focused outlet run by U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in March 2021 in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea. He was initially sentenced to six years in prison, but the term was reduced by a year on appeal in August 2022.

Karnei, a former freelancer with RFE/RL, was detained in July 2023 and sentenced to three years in March 2024 on charges of participating in an extremist group — the Belarusian Association of Journalists, which had been the largest independent media association in the country until it was dissolved in 2021 and later labeled an extremist group. His sentence was extended by eight months in December 2024.

“RFE/RL extends its deepest gratitude to the U.S. and Ukrainian governments for working with us to ensure that Vlad’s unjust detention was not prolonged,” RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus said in a statement.

Karnei and Yesypenko’s releases come after sustained international pressure, including from CPJ, and after Andrey Kuznechyk, another RFE/RL journalist, was freed from a Belarusian prison in February.

Belarus is Europe’s worst jailer of journalists, with at least 31 behind bars as of December 1, 2024. Thirteen of the 30 journalists still detained by Russia are Ukrainian. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Lauren Wolfe.

In a closed-door trial on Monday, columnist and peace activist Bahruz Samadov was sentenced by a court in the capital Baku to 15 years in prison for treason, after going on a hunger strike and attempting suicide the previous week.

On Friday, six journalists from Abzas Media, widely regarded as Azerbaijan’s most prominent anticorruption investigative outlet, were found guilty of acting as an organized group to commit multiple financial crimes, including currency smuggling, money laundering, and tax evasion, linked to alleged receipt of illegal Western donor funding:

• director Ulvi Hasanli, editor-in-chief Sevinj Vagifgizi (Abbasova), journalist Hafiz Babali – sentenced to 9 years
• reporters Nargiz Absalamova and Elnara Gasimova – sentenced to 8 years
• project coordinator Mahammad Kekalov – sentenced to 7 ½ years

In addition, journalist Farid Mehralizada from U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Azerbaijani service received a 9-year sentence as part of the same trial.

“The heavy sentences meted out to seven journalists in the Abzas Media case and to columnist Bahruz Samadov signal Azerbaijani authorities’ intent to wipe out what remains of independent coverage,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Reports that Samadov has attempted suicide are particularly concerning. Authorities should ensure Samadov’s wellbeing and immediately release all wrongly jailed journalists.”

Abzas Media told CPJ in a statement that the charges against their staff were “absurd and fabricated” and their “only ‘offense’ was exposing corruption, abuse of power, and informing the public of inconvenient truths.”

RFE/RL condemned Mehralizada’s sentence as a “sham” and “unnecessarily cruel.”

Treason case shrouded in secrecy

More than 20 leading Azerbaijani journalists have been jailed on charges of receiving funds from Western donors since late 2023, amid a decline in relations with the West and a surge in authoritarianism following Azerbaijan’s recapture of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, ending decades of separatist Armenian rule. 

Azerbaijan was the world’s 10th worst jailer with 13 journalists behind bars in CPJ’s latest annual prison census on December 1, 2024.

Full details of the charges against Samadov, who contributes to Georgia-based OC Media and U.S.-based Eurasianet and was detained by state security officers while visiting his family in Azerbaijan in 2024, have not been made public. Authorities classified as secret the case against Samadov, a prominent advocate for peace with neighboring Armenia and a doctoral student in the Czech Republic.

Pro-government media, which receive regular “recommendations” from authorities on what to publish, have denounced Samadov for writing “subversive” articles for the “anti-Azerbaijan” Eurasianet. His reporting, reviewed by CPJ, focuses on growing Azerbaijani militarism and authoritarianism.

‘Absurd’ charges in reprisal for corruption reporting

As the June 20 verdicts were read out, Abzas Media journalists turned their backs on the judges and held up posters of the outlet’s corruption investigations into senior officials, including the president’s family.

President Ilham Aliyev took over from his father in 2003 and won a fifth consecutive term in 2024.

Abzas Media continues to operate from exile.

Western-funded ‘spies’

Amid a major state media campaign against Western-funded “spies,” police raided Abzas Media’s office in November 2023 and said they found 40,000 euros (US$45,900), accusing U.S., French, and German embassies of funding the outlet illegally.

Police arrested the six journalists over the following three months. In 2024, Mehralizada was also detained, though he and Abzas Media denied that he worked for the outlet.

Azerbaijani law requires civil society groups to obtain state approval for foreign grants, which authorities accuse Abzas Media of failing to do.

Defense arguments, reviewed by CPJ, said that such an omission was punishable by fines, not criminal sanctions, and prosecutors did not provide evidence the journalists engaged in criminal activity. Rights advocates accuse Azerbaijan of routinely withholding permission for foreign grants and refusing to register organizations that seek them.

In February, Aziz Orujov, director of independent broadcaster Kanal 13, was sentenced to two years in prison on illegal construction charges. In December, Teymur Karimov, head of independent broadcaster Kanal 11 was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Five journalists from Toplum TV and 10 with Meydan TV face trial on similar foreign funding allegations.

Editor’s note: This text has been amended in the ninth paragraph to correct the number of journalists facing charges of receiving funds from Western donors.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

During the June 16-20 mission, CPJ, Reporters Without Borders, and Free Press Unlimited took part in a series of high-level engagements, including meeting Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla and Jose Torres Jr., head of the Presidential Task Force on Media Security, as well as hosting discussions with local media, journalists, and their families.

CPJ, represented by Asia-Pacific Director Beh Lih Yi, and the groups raised several key cases at those meetings, including advocating for the release of journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio and for full justice to be served in the murders of broadcasters Gerry Ortega in 2011 and Percival Mabasa in 2022.

The three press freedom groups are members of the MFC’s consultative network, which advises the MFC on the coalition’s work and facilitates selection of cases that it believes require state intervention.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Tuan, who was arrested in 2020 and is serving an 11-year sentence for “conducting propaganda against the state” due to his journalism, has suffered from internal hemorrhoids and severe bleeding during bowel movements for the past three weeks, a family representative told CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisals.

Tuan told his family in a June 19 phone call that his condition had not improved despite receiving three antibiotic injections, the representative said. The journalist told his family that authorities had not responded to a prison nurse’s diagnosis that he was suffering from issues relating to his colon and rectum.   

“Vietnamese journalist Le Huu Minh Tuan has been experiencing serious health problems for several years now, with symptoms similar to colon cancer, according to his family,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “Tuan’s pain and suffering during the last five years in prison is Vietnam’s shame and he should be freed now.”

Tuan, a member of the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam (IJAVN), has suffered periodically since 2022 from bloody stools, abdominal pain and other gastrointestinal problems, according to his family.

In 2024, Tuan’s health declined with severe weight loss, indigestion, numbness in both calves, chest pain, breathing difficulties, and an inability to eat solid foods, among other ailments, the U.S. Congress Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission reported.

Vietnam was the world’s seventh worst jailer of journalists, with at least 16 behind bars, when CPJ conducted its latest annual prison census on December 1, 2024.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security, which oversees the country’s prison system, did not respond to CPJ’s emailed requests for comment. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Tuan, who was arrested in 2020 and is serving an 11-year sentence for “conducting propaganda against the state” due to his journalism, has suffered from internal hemorrhoids and severe bleeding during bowel movements for the past three weeks, a family representative told CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisals.

Tuan told his family in a June 19 phone call that his condition had not improved despite receiving three antibiotic injections, the representative said. The journalist told his family that authorities had not responded to a prison nurse’s diagnosis that he was suffering from issues relating to his colon and rectum.   

“Vietnamese journalist Le Huu Minh Tuan has been experiencing serious health problems for several years now, with symptoms similar to colon cancer, according to his family,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “Tuan’s pain and suffering during the last five years in prison is Vietnam’s shame and he should be freed now.”

Tuan, a member of the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam (IJAVN), has suffered periodically since 2022 from bloody stools, abdominal pain and other gastrointestinal problems, according to his family.

In 2024, Tuan’s health declined with severe weight loss, indigestion, numbness in both calves, chest pain, breathing difficulties, and an inability to eat solid foods, among other ailments, the U.S. Congress Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission reported.

Vietnam was the world’s seventh worst jailer of journalists, with at least 16 behind bars, when CPJ conducted its latest annual prison census on December 1, 2024.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security, which oversees the country’s prison system, did not respond to CPJ’s emailed requests for comment. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

CPJ and the groups had submitted a formal request May 5 to visit Cumpio, a 26-year-old who has been held in the Tacloban City jail since she was arrested and charged in 2020 with possessing illegal firearms and financing terrorism. Her case continues in court.

The delegation was backed by the Media Freedom Coalition, a group of more than 50 countries pledged to support press freedom at home and abroad. It released a joint press statement on Monday.

“It is indefensible and inhumane to hold journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio any longer,” said CPJ’s Asia-Pacific Director Beh Lih Yi, from Tacloban City. “She has languished behind bars for more than five years even though she has not been convicted of any crime. The Philippines must live up to its reputation as a democracy and stop silencing critical reporting.”

After lengthy discussions with prison authorities, the coalition was able briefly to see Cumpio only from a distance, separated by three layers of prison bars. Through guards, Cumpio passed a letter addressed to Irene Khan, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, while the delegation handed over some essential items that included medication and handwritten notes.

Prison officials at the Tacloban City jail told CPJ and the international delegation that they needed to obtain approvals from the presidential office and the court before they are granted a visit. Since 2023, CPJ has made repeated attempts to visit Cumpio, all unsuccessful.

The delegation — which includes Reporters Without Borders, Free Press Unlimited, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, and the Altermidya network of independent media groups — had previously raised serious concerns over Cumpio’s pretrial detention and allegations  that authorities had planted the weapons that led to her arrest in February 2020. 

If convicted, Cumpio faces up to 40 years in prison.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Valizadeh, a former Radio Farda reporter, returned to Iran on March 6, 2024, after 14 years in exile. He was immediately detained by agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence, and later sentenced in two expedited court sessions for “collaboration with a hostile government,” without specifying which government in the charges or conviction. His appeal was denied.

“The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the Iranian authorities’ confiscation of Iranian-American journalist Reza Valizadeh’s identity documents, which is part of a broader pattern of using asset confiscation to punish and silence dissenting voices,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “Targeting imprisoned journalists in this way is meant to further isolate them and intimidate others. Iranian authorities must return Valizadeh’s documents without delay and end the use of asset confiscation as a tool of repression against independent journalism.” 

The authorities have also moved to seize assets belonging to Valizadeh and his family, according to London-based news outlet Iran International. Without access to his identification documents, Valizadeh is no longer able to manage his property-related affairs for local and foreign assets. Iran International noted a growing pattern of such punitive measures targeting imprisoned dual nationals.

This is Valizadeh’s second hunger strike; he previously protested in March 2024 over what he called his “sham trial,” ending it after six days due to concern for his mother, who went on the strike with him.

In a separate case, Tehran prosecutors opened proceedings against financial journalist Marziye Mahmoodi over a tweet about a national cooking oil shortage. She was accused of “spreading falsehoods,” according to her social media post. The press freedom group Defending Free Flow of Information in Iran said the case reflects growing pressure on journalists who cover economic issues.

CPJ emailed the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York for comment on Valizadeh but did not receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

One of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy activists, Joshua Wong, was transported from prison to court Friday and charged with colluding with foreign forces, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Wong, 28, is already serving a four-year-and-eight-month sentence for subversion. He is currently due for release about one-and-a-half years from now. If found guilty on the new charge it could prolong his imprisonment.

Wong is one of the most internationally recognizable faces of the now-quashed democracy movement in the city. He was among 45 Hong Kong opposition politicians and pro-democracy activists who were convicted with “conspiracy to commit subversion” under the city’s 2020 National Security Law for taking part in a democratic primary in the summer of 2020.

Wong appeared at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Friday afternoon wearing a navy blue shirt. He appeared in good spirits. After the court clerk read out the charge, Wong responded, “Understood,” and waved and nodded to supporters as he left. The entire hearing lasted about three minutes.

He was charged with one count of “conspiring to collude with foreign or external forces to endanger national security.” He was specifically accused of conspiring with exiled activist Nathan Law and others in 2020.

The case was adjourned until Aug. 8 to allow for further investigation, and Wong did not apply for bail and will remain in custody. He was not required to enter a plea.

(Kin Cheung/AP)

Dozens of uniformed officers were stationed outside the courthouse. Police set up barricades and vehicle-stoppers at nearby intersections, and police dogs were deployed for searches.

Sarah Brooks, China director at Amnesty International, said: “This new charge underscores the authorities’ fear of prominent dissenters and their willingness to do whatever it takes to keep them locked up for as long as possible.”

The nongovernment Hong Kong Human Rights Information Centre condemned what it called strategic abuse of the National Security Law to launch politically motivated prosecutions of pro-democracy leaders.

The group said the timing of the new charge—nearly five years after the alleged events—as clearly designed to avoid any overlap in sentencing, thereby maximizing Wong’s time in prison.

Wong rose to prominence during student-led protests more than a decade ago. He also joined massive democracy rallies in 2019 that triggered the imposition of the national security law.

China maintains the law is required to maintain order. It has cracked down on political dissent and squelched a once vibrant civil society in the territory.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Cantonese.

Local press freedom groups said those abducted between May 21 and 23 included:

• Abduljabbar Zayad, freelance photographer
• Hassan Ziyad, journalist with London-based newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed
• Abdulaziz Al-Noum, Director of the Soorah Media Production Center,
• Walid Ali Ghalib, deputy head of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate

On May 24, the Specialized Criminal Court in the capital Sanaa sentenced well-known Yemeni journalist Mohamed Al-Miyahi to 1½ years in prison for criticizing Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi online. Al-Miyahi was also ordered to sign a pledge not to resume his journalistic work and to pay a guarantee of 5 million riyals (US$20,500), which he would forfeit if he were to resume publication of material critical of the state.

“The kidnapping of at least four Yemeni journalists and media workers and the sentence issued against Mohamed Al-Miyahi exemplify the Houthis’ escalating assault on press freedom,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “We call on Houthi authorities to immediately release all detained journalists and stop weaponizing the law and courts to legitimize their repression of independent voices.”

The Iranian-backed rebels, who control Sanaa and govern more than 70% of Yemen’s population, have been fighting a Saudi-backed coalition since 2015. The group is designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Al-Miyahi criticized the Houthis in his last article prior to his September abduction and enforced disappearance for over a month. In January, he appeared in court, accused of “publishing articles against the state.” 

Al-Miyahi’s prosecution violates Article 13 of Yemen’s press law, which protects journalists from punishment for publishing their opinions, unless these are unlawful.

CPJ has criticized the establishment of parallel justice systems by non-state groups, like the Houthis, as they are widely seen as lacking impartiality.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Local press freedom groups said those abducted between May 21 and 23 included:

• Abduljabbar Zayad, freelance photographer
• Hassan Ziyad, journalist with London-based newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed
• Abdulaziz Al-Noum, Director of the Soorah Media Production Center,
• Walid Ali Ghalib, deputy head of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate

On May 24, the Specialized Criminal Court in the capital Sanaa sentenced well-known Yemeni journalist Mohamed Al-Miyahi to 1½ years in prison for criticizing Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi online. Al-Miyahi was also ordered to sign a pledge not to resume his journalistic work and to pay a guarantee of 5 million riyals (US$20,500), which he would forfeit if he were to resume publication of material critical of the state.

“The kidnapping of at least four Yemeni journalists and media workers and the sentence issued against Mohamed Al-Miyahi exemplify the Houthis’ escalating assault on press freedom,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “We call on Houthi authorities to immediately release all detained journalists and stop weaponizing the law and courts to legitimize their repression of independent voices.”

The Iranian-backed rebels, who control Sanaa and govern more than 70% of Yemen’s population, have been fighting a Saudi-backed coalition since 2015. The group is designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Al-Miyahi criticized the Houthis in his last article prior to his September abduction and enforced disappearance for over a month. In January, he appeared in court, accused of “publishing articles against the state.” 

Al-Miyahi’s prosecution violates Article 13 of Yemen’s press law, which protects journalists from punishment for publishing their opinions, unless these are unlawful.

CPJ has criticized the establishment of parallel justice systems by non-state groups, like the Houthis, as they are widely seen as lacking impartiality.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

On May 22, the Fafen Zone High Court in Jigjiga, the capital of Ethiopia’s eastern Somali Region, sentenced Ahmed, whose legal name is Ahmed Abdi Omar, to two years in prison. He had been detained since his April 23 arrest on incitement charges related to an interview he conducted with a man whose son died following an alleged police beating, as well as for commentary on Ahmed’s Facebook page. The charge was later changed to “propagation of disinformation and public incitement,” under the 2020 anti-hate speech law, according to the charge sheet, which was reviewed by CPJ.

“Ahmed Awga’s conviction and two-year prison sentence, based on a Facebook post he didn’t write, is outrageous and a stark illustration of Ethiopia’s escalating assault on press freedom,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa regional director, from Durban. “Ethiopian authorities must cease using the legal system to silence critical voices.”

The charge sheet alleges that on April 17, Ahmed posted statements on his Facebook page, describing a regional election as a “so-called election,” accusing regional government officials of holding the population hostage, and claiming specific districts were seized by certain individuals. He was also accused of inciting residents by allegedly stating, “we have no justice — only killing and death.”

A CPJ review of the prosecution’s evidence, corroborated by an analysis by VOSS TV, an online media outlet, shows his conviction was primarily based on a post he didn’t write. His account was merely tagged in an April 20 post, which clearly originated from another Facebook page, not Ahmed’s. None of Ahmed’s April 17 posts appeared to reference the allegations in the charge sheet, according to CPJ’s review.

Ahmed’s conviction is part of a broader crackdown on media in Ethiopia. At least six other journalists were arrested in the month of April alone, as the government tightened its control over the media regulator, the Ethiopian Media Authority (EMA).

In a May 27 interview with BBC’s Somali service, Somali Region President Mustafa Mohammed Omar rejected suggestions that people were being jailed simply for what they posted online. The four people currently in custody — “a journalist, a former official, and two activists” — face charges of “harming the reputation of security agencies, spreading false information about jail conditions, and exploiting the death of an inmate to incite the public,” he said, adding that the regional judiciary is independent.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Ahead of the Council’s forthcoming session, which opens on 16 June, the rights groups also called for an extension of the mandate of the independent U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea, which expires in July.

As of December 1, 2024, Eritrea remained the worst jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa, with 16 behind bars without charge or trial, according to CPJ’s latest annual global prison census. Of these, 13 have been in detention since 2000 or 2001.

In 2024, the Special Rapporteur Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker expressed concern about prolonged, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances in the Horn of Africa nation and described the imprisoned Eritreans as the “longest-detained journalists in the world.”

Read the full letter in English and French.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Trang, who is serving a nine-year sentence on anti-state charges, received CPJ’s 2022 International Press Freedom Award for her courage in the face of persecution.

Tuesday’s statement is timed to commemorate Trang’s 47^th birthday on May 27. It also raises concerns about Trang’s deteriorating health after nearly five years in detention and calls on authorities to allow her access to adequate medical treatment.

Read the full joint statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Abdelfattah has spent nearly a decade in prison and now faces an additional two years of detention—despite Egyptian legal provisions that should have guaranteed his release last September. On May 20, the journalist’s 69-year-old mother, Laila Soueif, resumed a near-total hunger strike in protest.

On March 4, CPJ led a joint letter signed by 50 prominent human rights leaders, Nobel laureates, writers, and public figures, urging President el-Sisi to issue a presidential pardon for Abdelfattah.

Read the full letter in English here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“The charges against Landry Ulrich Nguéma Ngokpélé over a publication in his newspaper sends a chilling signal across the media sector in the Central African Republic,” said Moussa Ngom, CPJ’s Francophone Africa representative. “Central African Republic authorities must secure his immediate release and ensure journalism is not criminalized.”

Ngokpélé’s was arrested by a man in civilian clothes, who pointed a gun at him and threatened to shoot if the journalist refused to cooperate, according to his lawyer, Roger Junior Loutomo, who spoke with CPJ.

On May 14, an investigating judge ordered Ngokpélé’s transfer to Ngaragba prison in Bangui from a gendarmerie office, where he had been held since his arrest.

On May 19, the judge charged Ngokpélé with complicity in rebellion, spreading information likely to disturb public order, inciting hatred andrevolt, and subversion against the constitution and the state, according to Loutomo and copies of the charge sheet, which CPJ reviewed.

Loutomo told CPJ the case was related to a report published in the paper’s April 22 edition, which said that the former president, who has been living in exile in Guinea Bissau, had returned to the capital.

Bozizé, who is sought by the International Criminal Court for possible crimes against humanity, seized power in 2003 and was toppled in 2013. In 2020, he set up a rebel group seeking to overthrow the government, for which Central African authorities sentenced him in absentia in 2023 to life in prison.

The charge sheet cites sections 11, 12, 292, 295, 381, and 382 of the penal code, so Ngokpélé would face time in prison if found guilty. However, the country’s press law holds that offenses involving journalism should fall under that law, which would only carry fines.

Ngokpélé was previously detained for more than two months in 2021.

Government spokesperson Maxime Balalou told CPJ via messaging app that he was “closely” following Ngokpélé’s case. Balalou asked to be sent questions via email, but when CPJ requested his email address, he did not respond.  

CPJ’s calls to the gendarmerie and the Bangui court went unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“The prosecution of Öznur Değer is yet another example of the witch hunt against critical journalists in Turkey. Reporting on sensitive issues does not equate with promoting violence,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities should quickly free Değer, drop the charge against her, and put an end to such vindictive prosecutions.”

Değer, news director for the pro-Kurdish site JİNNEWS, was taken into police custody during a February 7 raid on her home in the southeastern city of Mardin and put under arrest by a court.

The court subsequently charged her with making propaganda for the PKK, which Turkey recognizes as a terrorist organization.

The PKK, which has been fighting Turkish security forces since 1984, announced in May that it was planning to disband as part of a new peace process.

In the four-page indictment, reviewed by CPJ, prosecutors said PKK-related news, photographs, and videos that Değer posted on the social media platform X between 2021 and 2024 were terrorism propaganda.

The indictment also said Değer was under investigation for “insulting a public officer,” who filed a complaint about comments Değer made at a funeral wake in December.

Değer is appealing a six year and three month sentence issued against her and seven other journalists in June 2024 for membership of a terrorist organization. She spent almost seven months in jail, from October 2022 to May 2023, awaiting trial.

CPJ’s email requesting comment from the chief prosecutor’s office in Mardin did not receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“Denying medical care to journalist Chadha Hadj Mbarek, whose health is deteriorating in prison, is inhumane and risks further endangering her life,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s chief of programs. “Tunisian authorities must ensure Mbarek receives proper medical attention and should release her immediately, as she never should have been imprisoned in the first place.”

Mbarek, a journalist and a social media content editor with local independent content firm Instalingo, is being held at the Al-Mas’adin prison in Sousse, south of the capital Tunis, according to a Facebook statement by the journalist’s brother Amen Hadj Mbarek, and news reports. She suffers from vision loss, spinal and joint pain, and gastrointestinal issues that prevent her from taking painkillers, and has experienced vomiting, fainting, and constant pain, according to her brother, who told CPJ that her condition is rapidly deteriorating.

Her brother said Mbarek’s requests to speak with prison officials about her care have gone unanswered despite repeated hospitalizations and doctors recommending spinal tests and possible surgery. 

Mbarek, arrested in July 2023, is serving a five-year prison sentence under Tunisia’s 2022 cybercrime Decree-Law No. 2022-54. Authorities have barred her from receiving lawyer or family visits until an appeal hearing is scheduled.

CPJ’s email to the presidency requesting comment on Mbarek’s denial of medical treatment did not receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The groups called on Saudi authorities to release all detained journalists, lift arbitrary travel bans, and end legal and digital attacks. They also urged U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and the U.S. Congress to protect U.S.-based journalists from Saudi transnational repression and spyware.

Saudi Arabia is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists, with at least 10 behind bars on December 1, 2024, making it the 10^th worst jailer of journalists globally in CPJ’s latest annual prison census.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Phuong is already serving a 10-year prison sentence related to his dissemination of information about a 2020 land dispute where police clashed with villagers outside Hanoi.

Do Thi Thu, Phuong’s wife, told RFA Vietnamese that he has been charged again under Article 117 of the Criminal Code which punishes “making, storing, and disseminating” anti-state information – a charge commonly used against government critics.

“According to the investigator, in November 2024, my husband was found having papers and banners whose content were deemed against the state,” Thu said, adding that authorities at An Diem prison in central Quang Nam province where he is held forwarded those materials to the provincial security agency which decided to prosecute him.

She said the documents and banners were all written by Phuong to protest harsh conditions in An Diem prison and he kept them in his cell. One included the words, “down with communism.”

An Diem prison is known for incarcerating political prisoners.

In April 2024, RFA reported on four prisoners of conscience, including Phuong, who were allegedly mistreated by the prison authorities.

“I am very upset about what the prison in Quang Nam province did to my husband! My husband’s writing has no impact on society because he is in prison. They are just trying to punish him. Now facing another charge, the number of years my husband will have to spend in prison will be very high if the sentences pile up,” Thu told RFA.

Phuong’s lawyer, Dang Dinh Manh, who has decades of experience in political cases, said it is unprecedented for a political prisoner to be prosecuted for expressing his opinions in prison.

“The suppression of political prisoners in communist prisons is quite common, but Trinh Ba Phuong’s is the first case where a prisoner is criminally prosecuted for expressing their political opinions,” Manh said.

He said the latest charge against Phuong under Article 117 is “baseless.”

“Article 117 only applies to acts against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The Communist Party is a political organization, not a state. There is also no provision that allows equating the Communist Party with the State,” he said.

Phuong’s mother Can Thi Theu and younger brother Trinh Ba Tu are also imprisoned, serving 8-year sentences imposed in 2021, also on charges of spreading anti-state propaganda.

The family is known for opposing land grabs and for supporting farmers who have lost their land to development projects.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Truong Son for RFA Vietnamese.

The joint action specifically requests Rubio to call on Vietnam to stop incarcerating journalists, end harassment and threats against independent media, and repeal draconian legislation that curbs press freedom, including on social media platforms.

The letter highlights Vietnam Human Rights Day, observed each year in the United States on May 11 to mark the importance of advancing fundamental freedoms in Vietnam.

Read the full letter here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“These systematic attacks are clear examples of censorship, media repression, and obstruction of the free flow of information,” said Sara Qudah, CPJ’s regional director. “We condemn the Iranian authorities’ ongoing persecution of journalists and media outlets, which creates an environment of fear and intimidation.”

Between April 14 and April 21, six media directors and founders were convicted by political-press courts in Iran, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). The convictions involved both private and state-affiliated outlets, including:

• Mehdi Rahmanian, director of the private reformist Shargh Daily on unknown charges
• A director of the state-run Fars News Agency, on charges of disclosing confidential information
• The director of the reformist newspaper Ebtekar, on charges of spreading rumors
• The director of the official state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), on charges of insult, slander, and dissemination of falsehoods
• The director of the independent Eslahat News platform, on charges of publishing false content
• The director of the economic news website Nabze Bazaar, on charges of disseminating fabricated material

The campaign of intimidation by Iranian authorities has continued to escalate. On April 22, security forces in Tehran threatened Kerman-based photojournalist Hassan Abbasi with arrest. Abbasi, the director of the banned news website Ashkan News, was summoned on charges of spreading false information.

On April 27, Karaj-based freelancejournalist and media activist Omid Faraghat, who focuses on political affairs, was also summoned.

That same day, security forces raided the home of journalist Mohammad Parsi, editor-in-chief of Kandoo magazine and director of two other media outlets, and seized his electronic devices. He was charged with offenses that include “propaganda against the state” and “spreading false information.”

In the wake of the April 26 explosion at a port near Bandar Abbas, in southern Iran, authorities have aggressively sought to suppress independent reporting, with an aim to control public discourse through the intimidation and censorship of media professionals.

Meanwhile, Nasrin Hassani, a journalist being held at Bojnourd Prison in Iran’s eastern Khorasan province, is enduring inhumane and degrading conditions, according to the recent report by press freedom group Defending Free Flow of Information in Iran (DeFFI). Hassani, a reporter for the state-run local newspaper Etefaghyeh and editor-in-chief of the social media-based outlet East Adventure Press, is serving the 15th month of her 19-month sentence in the general crimes ward, with inadequate access to medical care, poor sanitation, and denial of regular visits with her teenage son.

CPJ emailed the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York requesting comment on the suppression and detention of journalists but did not receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

As governments escalate efforts to intimidate reporters and control narratives, journalism — and democracy itself — is under threat, said CPJ and the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, a group of lawmakers working to improve rights in the region. In a joint statement on the eve of World Press Freedom Day on May 3, they also called for stronger protection mechanisms for reporters and the reform of repressive laws that criminalize journalism.

There were at least 52 journalists behind bars in Southeast Asia on December 1, 2024, CPJ’s latest annual global prison census shows. They were mainly held in Myanmar and Vietnam, while one journalist was being held in the Philippines. The Philippines and Myanmar have also consistently ranked among the top offenders where murderers of journalists go free.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

On April 3, a Myanaung Township court in southwest Myanmar convicted Than Htike Myint under Section 52(a) of the Counterterrorism Law for having rebel People’s Defense Force contacts on his cell phone, Myaelatt Athan editor-in-chief Salai Kaung Myat Min told CPJ, noting that such sources were needed for the journalist’s reporting.

“CPJ strongly condemns the severe sentence given to journalist Than Htike Myint,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “Myanmar’s junta must stop conflating news reporting with terrorism and cease treating independent war reporters as criminals.”

Than Htike Myint was arrested on February 6 in Myanaung Township’s Ein Pin town, where he had temporarily returned from hiding to visit his then-pregnant wife, according to the exile-run Independent Myanmar Journalists Association, a press group, and the independent DVB news site.

Soldiers beat Than Htike Myint during interrogations at the 51st Light Infantry Battalion Base, where he was held for seven days before being transferred to Myanaung Police Station, those sources and Salai Kaung Myat Min said, adding that he is being detained at Hinthada Prison, also in the coastal Ayeyarwady Region.

Myaelatt Athan did not make the news of his conviction and sentencing public until April 29.

Myanmar’s military has been battling pro-democracy fighters and other ethnic groups since seizing power from Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in 2021.

Than Htike Myint began reporting for Myaelatt Athan in January and previously worked with the local DVB and Mizzima news groups as a reporter, Salai Kaung Myat Min and news reports said. 

Myanmar was the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists with 35 behind bars in CPJ’s latest annual prison census on December 1, 2024.

Myanmar’s Ministry of Information did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment on the allegations of abuse and terrorism charges. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

I don’t want people to lose hope. Stay positive and believe in the inevitability of justice.

This is hearing is part of the democratic system, as it prevents a tyrant from having unchecked power.

I am in prison, but am not prisoned.

A system of democracy guarantees freedom of speech. Speaking of Palestine doesn’t not only qualify as freedom of speech but it is also about our humanity.

Keep the hope alive.

I will see you under ths sun.

The post I Am in Prison, But Not Imprisoned appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mohsen Mahdawi.

In 1979, Sam Neill appeared in an Australian comedy movie about hacks on a Sydney newspaper.

The Journalist was billed as “a saucy, sexy, funny look at a man with a nose for scandal and a weakness for women”.

That would probably not fly these days — but as a rule, movies about Australian journalists are no laughing matter.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Peter Greste’s The First Casualty
• Listen to RNZ Mediawatch

Back in 1982, a young Mel Gibson starred as a foreign correspondent who was dropped into Jakarta during revolutionary chaos in The Year of Living Dangerously. The 1967 events the movie depicted were real enough, but Mel Gibson’s correspondent Guy Hamilton was made up for what was essentially a romantic drama.

There was no romance and a lot more real life 25 years later in Balibo, another movie with Australian journalists in harm’s way during Indonesian upheaval.

Anthony La Paglia had won awards for his performance as Roger East, a journalist killed in what was then East Timor — now Timor-Leste — in December 1975. East was killed while investigating the fate of five other journalists — including New Zealander Guy Cunningham — who was killed during the Indonesian invasion two months earlier.

The Correspondent has a happier ending but is still a tough watch — especially for its subject.

Met in London newsrooms
I first met Peter Greste in newsrooms in London about 30 years ago. He had worked for Reuters, CNN, and the BBC — going on to become a BBC correspondent in Afghanistan.

He later reported from Belgrade, Santiago, and then Nairobi, from where he appeared regularly on RNZ’s Nine to Noon as an African news correspondent. Greste later joined the English-language network of the Doha-based Al Jazeera and became a worldwide story himself while filling in as the correspondent in Cairo.

Greste and two Egyptian colleagues, Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy, were arrested in late 2013 on trumped-up charges of aiding and abetting the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation labeled “terrorist” by the new Egyptian regime of the time.

Six months later he was sentenced to seven years in jail for “falsifying news” and smearing the reputation of Egypt itself. Mohamed was sentenced to 10 years.

Media organisations launched an international campaign for their freedom with the slogan “Journalism is not a crime”. Peter’s own family became familiar faces in the media while working hard for his release too.

Peter Greste was deported to Australia in February 2015. The deal stated he would serve the rest of his sentence there, but the Australian government did not enforce that. Instead, Greste became a professor of media and journalism, currently at Macquarie University in Sydney.

Movie consultant
Among other things, he has also been a consultant on The Correspondent — now in cinemas around New Zealand — with Richard Roxborough cast as Greste himself.

Greste told The Sydney Morning Herald he had to watch it “through his fingers” at first.

“I eventually came to realise it’s not me that’s up there on the screen. It’s the product of a whole bunch of creatives. And the result is … more like a painting rather than a photograph,” Greste told Mediawatch.

“Over the years I’ve written about it, I’ve spoken about it countless times. I’ve built a career on it. But I wasn’t really anticipating the emotional impact of seeing the craziness of my arrest, the confusion of that period, the claustrophobia of the cell, the sheer frustration of the crazy trial and the really discombobulating moment of my release.

“But there is another very difficult story about what happened to a colleague of mine in Somalia, which I haven’t spoken about publicly. Seeing that on screen was actually pretty gut-wrenching.”

In 2005, his BBC colleague Kate Peyton was shot alongside him on their first day in on assignment in Somalia. She died soon after.

“That was probably the toughest day of my entire life far over and above anything I went through in Egypt. But I am glad that they put it in [The Correspondent]. It underlines … the way in which journalism is under attack. What happened to us in Egypt wasn’t a random, isolated incident — but part of a much longer pattern we’re seeing continue to this day.”

‘Owed his life’
Greste says he “owes his life” to fellow prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah — an Egyptian activist who is also in the film.

“There’s a bit of artistic licence in the way it was portrayed but . . .  he is easily one of the most intelligent, astute and charismatic humanitarians I’ve ever come across. He was one of the main pro-democracy activists who was behind the Arab Spring revolution in 2011 — a true democrat.

“He also inspired me to write the letters that we smuggled out of prison that described our arrest not as an attack on … what we’d actually come to represent. And that was press freedom.

“That helped frame the campaign that ultimately got me out. So, for both psychological and political reasons, I feel like I owe him my life.

“There was nothing in our reporting that confirmed the allegations against us. So I started to drag up all sorts of demons from the past. I started thinking maybe this is the universe punishing me for sins of the past. I was obviously digging up that particular moment as one of the most extreme and tragic moments. It took a long time for me to get past it.

“He’d been in prison a lot because of his activism, so he understood the psychology of it. He also understood the politics of it in ways that I could never do as a newcomer.”

“Unfortunately, he is still there. He should have been released on September 29th last year. His mother launched a hunger strike in London . . . so I actually joined her on hunger strike earlier this year to try and add pressure.

“If this movie also draws a bit of attention to his case, then I think that’s an important element.”

Another wrinkle
Another wrinkle in the story was the situation of his two Egyptian Al Jazeera colleagues.

Greste was essentially a stranger to them, having only arrived in Egypt shortly before their arrest.

The film shows Greste clashing with Fahmy, who later sued Al Jazeera. Fahmy felt the international pressure to free Greste was making their situation worse by pushing the Egyptian regime into a corner.

“To call it a confrontation is probably a bit of an understatement. We had some really serious arguments and sometimes they got very, very heated. But I want audiences to really understand Fahmy’s worldview in this film.

“He and I had very different understandings of what was going … and how those differences played out.

“I’ve got a hell of a lot of respect for him. He is like a brother to me. That doesn’t mean we always agreed with each other and doesn’t mean we always got on with each other like any siblings, I suppose.”

His colleagues were eventually released on bail shortly after Greste’s deportation in 2015.

Fahmy renounced his Egyptian citizenship and was later deported to Canada, while Mohamed was released on bail and eventually pardoned.

Retrial — all ‘reconvicted’
“After I was released there was a retrial … and we were all reconvicted. They were finally released and pardoned, but the pardon didn’t extend to me.

“I can’t go back because I’m still a convicted ‘terrorist’ and I still have an outstanding prison sentence to serve, which is a little bit weird. Any country that has an extradition treaty with Egypt is a problem. There are a fairly significant number of those across the Middle East and Africa.”

Greste told Mediawatch his conviction was even flagged in transit in Auckland en route from New York to Sydney. He was told he failed a character test.

“I was able to resolve it. I had some friends in Canberra and were able to sort it out, but I was told in no uncertain terms I’m not allowed into New Zealand without getting a visa because of that criminal record.

“If I’m traveling to any country I have to say … I was convicted on terrorism offences. Generally speaking, I can explain it, but it often takes a lot of bureaucratic process to do that.”

Greste’s first account of his time in jail — The First Casualty — was published in 2017. Most of the book was about media freedom around the world, lamenting that the numbers of journalists jailed and killed increased after his release.

Something that Greste also now ponders a lot in his current job as a professor of media and journalism.

Ten years on from that, it is worse again. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says at least 124 journalists and media workers were killed last year, nearly two-thirds of them Palestinians killed by Israel in its war in Gaza.

The book has now been updated and republished as The Correspondent.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

In 1979, Sam Neill appeared in an Australian comedy movie about hacks on a Sydney newspaper.

The Journalist was billed as “a saucy, sexy, funny look at a man with a nose for scandal and a weakness for women”.

That would probably not fly these days — but as a rule, movies about Australian journalists are no laughing matter.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Peter Greste’s The First Casualty
• Listen to RNZ Mediawatch

Back in 1982, a young Mel Gibson starred as a foreign correspondent who was dropped into Jakarta during revolutionary chaos in The Year of Living Dangerously. The 1967 events the movie depicted were real enough, but Mel Gibson’s correspondent Guy Hamilton was made up for what was essentially a romantic drama.

There was no romance and a lot more real life 25 years later in Balibo, another movie with Australian journalists in harm’s way during Indonesian upheaval.

Anthony La Paglia had won awards for his performance as Roger East, a journalist killed in what was then East Timor — now Timor-Leste — in December 1975. East was killed while investigating the fate of five other journalists — including New Zealander Guy Cunningham — who was killed during the Indonesian invasion two months earlier.

The Correspondent has a happier ending but is still a tough watch — especially for its subject.

Met in London newsrooms
I first met Peter Greste in newsrooms in London about 30 years ago. He had worked for Reuters, CNN, and the BBC — going on to become a BBC correspondent in Afghanistan.

He later reported from Belgrade, Santiago, and then Nairobi, from where he appeared regularly on RNZ’s Nine to Noon as an African news correspondent. Greste later joined the English-language network of the Doha-based Al Jazeera and became a worldwide story himself while filling in as the correspondent in Cairo.

Greste and two Egyptian colleagues, Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy, were arrested in late 2013 on trumped-up charges of aiding and abetting the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation labeled “terrorist” by the new Egyptian regime of the time.

Six months later he was sentenced to seven years in jail for “falsifying news” and smearing the reputation of Egypt itself. Mohamed was sentenced to 10 years.

Media organisations launched an international campaign for their freedom with the slogan “Journalism is not a crime”. Peter’s own family became familiar faces in the media while working hard for his release too.

Peter Greste was deported to Australia in February 2015. The deal stated he would serve the rest of his sentence there, but the Australian government did not enforce that. Instead, Greste became a professor of media and journalism, currently at Macquarie University in Sydney.

Movie consultant
Among other things, he has also been a consultant on The Correspondent — now in cinemas around New Zealand — with Richard Roxborough cast as Greste himself.

Greste told The Sydney Morning Herald he had to watch it “through his fingers” at first.

“I eventually came to realise it’s not me that’s up there on the screen. It’s the product of a whole bunch of creatives. And the result is … more like a painting rather than a photograph,” Greste told Mediawatch.

“Over the years I’ve written about it, I’ve spoken about it countless times. I’ve built a career on it. But I wasn’t really anticipating the emotional impact of seeing the craziness of my arrest, the confusion of that period, the claustrophobia of the cell, the sheer frustration of the crazy trial and the really discombobulating moment of my release.

“But there is another very difficult story about what happened to a colleague of mine in Somalia, which I haven’t spoken about publicly. Seeing that on screen was actually pretty gut-wrenching.”

In 2005, his BBC colleague Kate Peyton was shot alongside him on their first day in on assignment in Somalia. She died soon after.

“That was probably the toughest day of my entire life far over and above anything I went through in Egypt. But I am glad that they put it in [The Correspondent]. It underlines … the way in which journalism is under attack. What happened to us in Egypt wasn’t a random, isolated incident — but part of a much longer pattern we’re seeing continue to this day.”

‘Owed his life’
Greste says he “owes his life” to fellow prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah — an Egyptian activist who is also in the film.

“There’s a bit of artistic licence in the way it was portrayed but . . .  he is easily one of the most intelligent, astute and charismatic humanitarians I’ve ever come across. He was one of the main pro-democracy activists who was behind the Arab Spring revolution in 2011 — a true democrat.

“He also inspired me to write the letters that we smuggled out of prison that described our arrest not as an attack on … what we’d actually come to represent. And that was press freedom.

“That helped frame the campaign that ultimately got me out. So, for both psychological and political reasons, I feel like I owe him my life.

“There was nothing in our reporting that confirmed the allegations against us. So I started to drag up all sorts of demons from the past. I started thinking maybe this is the universe punishing me for sins of the past. I was obviously digging up that particular moment as one of the most extreme and tragic moments. It took a long time for me to get past it.

“He’d been in prison a lot because of his activism, so he understood the psychology of it. He also understood the politics of it in ways that I could never do as a newcomer.”

“Unfortunately, he is still there. He should have been released on September 29th last year. His mother launched a hunger strike in London . . . so I actually joined her on hunger strike earlier this year to try and add pressure.

“If this movie also draws a bit of attention to his case, then I think that’s an important element.”

Another wrinkle
Another wrinkle in the story was the situation of his two Egyptian Al Jazeera colleagues.

Greste was essentially a stranger to them, having only arrived in Egypt shortly before their arrest.

The film shows Greste clashing with Fahmy, who later sued Al Jazeera. Fahmy felt the international pressure to free Greste was making their situation worse by pushing the Egyptian regime into a corner.

“To call it a confrontation is probably a bit of an understatement. We had some really serious arguments and sometimes they got very, very heated. But I want audiences to really understand Fahmy’s worldview in this film.

“He and I had very different understandings of what was going … and how those differences played out.

“I’ve got a hell of a lot of respect for him. He is like a brother to me. That doesn’t mean we always agreed with each other and doesn’t mean we always got on with each other like any siblings, I suppose.”

His colleagues were eventually released on bail shortly after Greste’s deportation in 2015.

Fahmy renounced his Egyptian citizenship and was later deported to Canada, while Mohamed was released on bail and eventually pardoned.

Retrial — all ‘reconvicted’
“After I was released there was a retrial … and we were all reconvicted. They were finally released and pardoned, but the pardon didn’t extend to me.

“I can’t go back because I’m still a convicted ‘terrorist’ and I still have an outstanding prison sentence to serve, which is a little bit weird. Any country that has an extradition treaty with Egypt is a problem. There are a fairly significant number of those across the Middle East and Africa.”

Greste told Mediawatch his conviction was even flagged in transit in Auckland en route from New York to Sydney. He was told he failed a character test.

“I was able to resolve it. I had some friends in Canberra and were able to sort it out, but I was told in no uncertain terms I’m not allowed into New Zealand without getting a visa because of that criminal record.

“If I’m traveling to any country I have to say … I was convicted on terrorism offences. Generally speaking, I can explain it, but it often takes a lot of bureaucratic process to do that.”

Greste’s first account of his time in jail — The First Casualty — was published in 2017. Most of the book was about media freedom around the world, lamenting that the numbers of journalists jailed and killed increased after his release.

Something that Greste also now ponders a lot in his current job as a professor of media and journalism.

Ten years on from that, it is worse again. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says at least 124 journalists and media workers were killed last year, nearly two-thirds of them Palestinians killed by Israel in its war in Gaza.

The book has now been updated and republished as The Correspondent.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

The journalists were all accused of association with the anti-corruption movement of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died last year in a Russian prison colony in the Arctic at age 47. All four denied the charges.

“The sentencing of four journalists at once to 5.5 years in prison is blatant testimony to Russian authorities’ profound contempt for press freedom,” said CPJ Chief Programs Officer Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Russian authorities should immediately release Antonina Favorskaya, Artyom Krieger, Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin, drop all charges against them, and stop jailing journalists in retaliation for their work.” 

The court also banned them from publishing any content on the internet for three years after they complete their prison sentences.

Russian authorities detained Favorskaya, a journalist with the independent news outlet SOTAvision, in Moscow on March 17, 2024, and charged her 11 days later with making and editing videos and publications and collecting material for Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which Russian authorities have banned as extremist.

Favorskava’s case was later combined with the cases against Krieger, another SOTAvision journalist, as well as freelance journalists Karelin and Gabov, who are also accused of cooperation with Navalny’s FBK. The trial of the four started behind closed doors on October 2, 2024.

Krieger was detained in Moscow on June 18, 2024. SOTAvision rejected the charges against him, saying that he “has never been an activist and was not affiliated with any parties or movements.”

Karelin, a freelance videographer who has worked for The Associated Press  and German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW), was detained in the northern region of Murmansk on April 26, 2024. Gabov, a freelance journalist who has worked with Reuters, German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was detained the next day in Moscow.

CPJ emailed the branch of Russia’s Investigative Committee in Moscow for comment but received no response.

Russia is the world’s fifth-worst jailer of journalists, with CPJ’s most recent prison census documenting at least 30 journalists in prison on December 1, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“The Venezuelan government’s crackdown on the press has persisted for months, intensifying following the July 28 disputed reelection of President Nicolás Maduro,” said CPJ’s Latin America program coordinator, Cristina Zahar, in São Paulo. “Public scrutiny is a crucial component of democratic accountability and a free press, and Nakary Mena Ramos and Gianni González must be freed without condition.”

A criminal court on April 10 ordered Mena, a reporter with the independent news site Impacto Venezuela, to remain in detention at a women’s prison on the outskirts of the capital city of Caracas on preliminary charges of “hate crimes” and “publishing fake news,” according to the National Press Workers Union (SNTP).  

Impacto Venezuela posted that Mena, 28, and González, who is being held at El Rodeo II prison near Caracas, were denied access to private lawyers but assigned public defenders.

A pro-government journalist criticized Mena’s report on rising crime in Caracas – a sensitive issue for the government –a day before she and González went missing on April 8 near a public square in downtown Caracas. Minister Diosdado Cabello has also criticized the report, calling it “a campaign to instill fear in people.” 

Impacto Venezuela defended Mena’s report as based on interviews with average citizens and supported with government information.

The arrests of Mena and González come amid a sharp rise in oppression against Venezuelan journalists by Maduro’s authoritarian government, which has created a heightened environment of fear, stigmatization, and criminalization of independent voices. 

CPJ’s calls to the attorney general’s office in Caracas did not receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“The Venezuelan government’s crackdown on the press has persisted for months, intensifying following the July 28 disputed reelection of President Nicolás Maduro,” said CPJ’s Latin America program coordinator, Cristina Zahar, in São Paulo. “Public scrutiny is a crucial component of democratic accountability and a free press, and Nakary Mena Ramos and Gianni González must be freed without condition.”

A criminal court on April 10 ordered Mena, a reporter with the independent news site Impacto Venezuela, to remain in detention at a women’s prison on the outskirts of the capital city of Caracas on preliminary charges of “hate crimes” and “publishing fake news,” according to the National Press Workers Union (SNTP).  

Impacto Venezuela posted that Mena, 28, and González, who is being held at El Rodeo II prison near Caracas, were denied access to private lawyers but assigned public defenders.

A pro-government journalist criticized Mena’s report on rising crime in Caracas – a sensitive issue for the government –a day before she and González went missing on April 8 near a public square in downtown Caracas. Minister Diosdado Cabello has also criticized the report, calling it “a campaign to instill fear in people.” 

Impacto Venezuela defended Mena’s report as based on interviews with average citizens and supported with government information.

The arrests of Mena and González come amid a sharp rise in oppression against Venezuelan journalists by Maduro’s authoritarian government, which has created a heightened environment of fear, stigmatization, and criminalization of independent voices. 

CPJ’s calls to the attorney general’s office in Caracas did not receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Mhlanga, a journalist for privately owned Heart and Soul Television, has been detained since February 24 on incitement charges for interviewing a war veteran who called for President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s resignation. 

“The repeated denial of bail is yet another example of the injustice that Blessed Mhlanga has been forced to endure for simply doing his job as an independent journalist covering all sides of Zimbabwe’s political story,” said CPJ Africa Regional Director Angela Quintal in New York. “Zimbabwean authorities should stop hounding Blessed Mhlanga and withdraw the charges against him, so that he can be free to report the news.” 

The journalist has been behind bars over offenses allegedly committed in his interview in November 2024 and further coverage in January 2025 of Blessed Geza, a veteran of Zimbabwe’s war for independence from white minority rule, who also accused Mnangagwa of nepotism, corruption, and failing to address economic issues.

On February 28, the Harare Magistrates Court denied Mhlanga bail. After several delays, the High Court dismissed an appeal of the bail ruling on March 21. Mhlanga’s lawyer, Chris Mhike, renewed the bail application in the magistrates court on April 4, but Magistrate Donald Ndirowei dismissed the appeal on Monday. Mhike told CPJ they will appeal the latest ruling.

If found guilty, Mhlanga could be jailed for up to five years and fined up to US$700 under the 2021 Cyber and Data Protection Act.

Zimbabwe’s government, in an effort to silence the press, has been jailing independent journalists and introducing laws to restrict freedom of expression, according to a recent CPJ report.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Turkey was a haven for foreign journalists covering the region just a decade ago. Swedish journalist Joakim Medin’s arrest upon traveling to Istanbul is a chilling reminder that the country has gravely changed,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities should release Medin without delay in order to avoid further tarnishing the country’s reputation in international media circles.” 

Medin, a reporter for the Swedish newspaper Dagens ETC, was immediately taken into police custody upon his arrival in Istanbul to cover civil unrest amid the government’s crackdown on the city’s opposition municipalities.

Turkish authorities have accused Medin of being involved in a January 11, 2023, anti-Erdoğan protest in Stockholm, according to multiple reports. Authorities claim the gathering was organized by people with ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Turkey recognizes as a terrorist organization. Prosecutors in the capital city of Ankara have initiated a criminal investigation against 15 suspects, including Medin, in connection with the event, according to a statementfrom the directorate of communications at the president’s office. 

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told Dagens ETC that his case is of the “highest priority,” and she is working with Sweden’s consulate general in Istanbul to get the journalist released. 

Separately, BBC correspondent Mark Lowen, who was covering Istanbul’s civil unrest was detained and deported by the authorities last week. Turkish authorities said he wasn’t accredited to work in the country.

CPJ’s email to the chief prosecutor’s office in Ankara and Istanbul regarding Medin and Lowen respectively but did not receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Yashar Shohret, 26, who previously participated in the 2022 “White Paper” protests in China, has been missing since his arrest on Aug. 9, 2023, in Chengdu, Sichuan province, where he had been going to university.

A new report by Weiquanwang, or Rights Protection Network, a loose network of volunteers in China and abroad seeking to promote legal reforms in China, found that Shohret had been sentenced on June 20, 2024, to three years in prison on charges of “promoting extremism” and “illegally possessing items promoting extremism.”

He appealed the verdict, but the second trial upheld the original sentence, with the prison term lasting until Aug. 8, 2026. He is currently serving his sentence at the Wusu Prison in Xinjiang, the group said.

Radio Free Asia could not independently confirm that. Calls to the prison and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Prison Administration Bureau were not answered. Chinese search engines yielded no public records of Shohret’s arrest, trial or sentencing.

Overseas Uyghur youth activist Aman, who prefers a pseudonym for safety reasons, said the Chinese Communist Party has used high-profile arrests to set an example, but now they often make people “disappear quietly,” without announcing charges or public sentencing.

‘White Paper Protests’

Shohret originally hailed from Bole city, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of northwestern China, where 12 million Uyghurs live and face widespread persecution and surveillance under Beijing’s rule.

Previously, Shohret had been detained for three weeks for participating in the November 2022 “White Paper” protests, when thousands took to the streets of Chinese cities to protest harsh COVID-19 restrictions.

The rare public protests were triggered by a big apartment building fire in Urumqi in which several Uyghur residents died. Many demonstrators held up white sheets of paper to express that their voices were stifled.

Shohret sang a memorial song in Uyghur language for the fire victims and was immediately suppressed by the police and detained for 21 days on suspicion of “gathering a crowd to disrupt social order” before being released, Weiquanwang said.

‘Charged out like cheetahs’

Shohret, who performed under the stage name “Uigga,” seems to have gotten in trouble for songs he composed.

One of them, a 2023 song titled “Wake Up” that was listed on NetEase Cloud Musica popular Chinese music streaming service, contained the following Uyghur lyrics:

“They charged out like cheetahs.

Who? A group of hunters...

When I woke up,

The surroundings made me sink into deep thought."

In his lyrics, Shohret appears to metaphorically refer to himself as prey in a hostile environment, his fate already decided, said Sawut Muhammed, director of East Asian Affairs at the advocacy group World Uyghur Congress.

Those words were probably viewed as threatening to the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, said Muhammed.

“In the CCP’s view, emphasizing the Uyghur language could lead to a rise in Uyghur nationalism,” he said. That’s “detrimental to Xi Jinping’s vision of building a unified Chinese nation.”

Sawut pointed out that after 2017, when there was mass internment of Uyghurs in camps, China arrested many Uyghur scholars, singers, poets and writers. Many were accused of using politics in their art.

Although China’s constitution guarantees the right to use one’s mother tongue, the implementation of bilingual education after the year 2000 effectively requires Uyghur students to learn Mandarin and suppresses the Uyghur language, he said.

Gong Zi Shen, a Chinese current affairs commentator living in the United States, said Shohret’s lyrics are not explicitly political, but describe inner emotions. While the White Paper movement was sparked by dissatisfaction with the lockdown and zero-COVID policies, Shohret was not a leading student figure, he said.

However, Beijing cannot tolerate even the suggestion of dissent, and sentenced him for “extremism,” a punishment far more severe than would be applied to majority Han Chinese, Shen said.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Xiaohua Xia for RFA Mandarin.

Ponomarenko is already serving a six-year prison sentence after being convicted in February 2023 on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military.

“The additional 22 months in prison given to journalist Maria Ponomarenko shows the relentless attitude of the Russian authorities towards a journalist who has already been pushed to breaking point by the last three years spent in prison,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Authorities should immediately release Ponomarenko, along with all other jailed members of the press.”

With the latest sentence, and considering time served, Ponomarenko has three years left in prison, RusNews reported.

Russian authorities first detained Ponomarenko in April 2022 and accused her of publishing false information in a now-shuttered Telegram news channel about an alleged Russian airstrike on a theater crowded with refugees in Mariupol, Ukraine, for which Russian authorities denied responsibility.

On November 2, 2023, RusNews reported that authorities had opened a new criminal case against Ponomarenko for allegedly using violence against prison staff. The journalist allegedly resisted being escorted to a disciplinary commission by two prison employees, according to human rights website OVD-Info.

During a hearing on March 24, 2025, she spoke about a recent suicide attempt in prison, which she said came as a result of bullying by prison staff. She said she had been sent to a punishment cell 13 times in the past year. In 2023, a psychological and psychiatric examination revealed that Ponomarenko has a form of personality disorder and needs psychiatric assistance, which she is denied.

Russia was the world’s fifth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 30 journalists behind bars on December 1, 2024, when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census.

CPJ emailed the prosecutor’s office in Altai Krai for comment but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, journalist and founder of the media outlet elPeriódico, was arrested on July 29, 2022, on charges of financial crimes and held in preventive detention for more than 800 days. On October 18, 2024, an appeals court granted Zamora’s provisional release to house arrest. However, on March 4, 2025, the Third Chamber of the Criminal Court of Appeals partially annulled the process and reversed the decision that granted substitutive measures, ordering Zamora back to jail. The next day, Zamora’s legal team filed a constitutional amparo action before the Supreme Court challenging the validity of the March 4 appeals court decision, and seeking to protect Zamora’s human rights, particularly his right to liberty. On March 10, 2025, the Court complied with the decision of the Third Chamber, and Zamora was remanded in custody.

The amicus brief, filed in support of the amparo, urges the Court to maintain the criteria of the lower court that determined Zamora’s trial could move forward under alternative measures, “without the need to remain in pretrial detention.” It states that “not granting [the] amparo in favor of Mr. José Rubén Zamora Marroquín would constitute a serious violation of his rights under international standards.”

The brief also stated that: 

“Should this Court decide to grant the amparo, Mr. Zamora would be able to return to obtaining substitutive measures instead of serving several more years in pretrial detention without a final sentence. The alleged flight risk supporting the remand is unsubstantiated, as Mr. Zamora has consistently demonstrated his compliance with imposed restrictions, and with the home detention regime in general.

Mr. Zamora’s extended deprivation of liberty is unnecessary and unjustified, given that he has not been convicted with a final sentence. This situation violates international human rights standards such as the right to liberty, the exceptionality of pre-trial detention and the presumption of innocence.” 

In the brief, the signatory organizations cite the May 2024 opinion of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on Zamora’s case. The Working Group determined that Zamora’s ongoing imprisonment constituted arbitrary detention and violated multiple international human rights standards and called on the Guatemalan government to “remedy Mr. Zamora’s situation without delay and bring it into compliance with relevant international standards.”

The brief highlights the profound negative effects of detention on the physical and mental health of the 68-year-old journalist, including significant weight loss, skin and digestive issues, and other adverse effects. It points to significant delays and inconsistencies in the criminal proceedings against Zamora, and argues that prosecutors and appeals courts have failed to present sufficient evidence to justify the need for preventive detention in this case.

The brief also notes the retaliatory nature of the case. Numerous international organizations, including many of the brief signatories, have repeatedly raised concerns about the case’s broader impact on press freedom in Guatemala, and the use of criminal proceedings to intimidate journalists and human rights defenders like José Rubén Zamora. 

“The circumstances of Mr. Zamora’s detention indicate that it is used as a punishment and not to prevent him from escaping or hindering the case. Pretrial detention is a means of silencing his journalistic activities, rather than responding to legitimate criminal procedural concerns,” it says. 

###

About the Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. We defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.

Signatories and Press Contacts

Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice – Natalie Southwick, nsouthwick@nycbar.org

CIVICUS – media@civicus.org

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) press@cpj.org

Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF) – Karen Arita, karita@dplf.org

Reporteros Sin Fronteras (RSF) – Artur Romeu, aromeu@rsf.org

Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) – Ana María Méndez-Dardón, amendez@wola.org

Article 19 México y Centroamérica

International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) 

Protection International Mesoamérica

Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa (SIP)

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Mhlanga, who works with the privately owned broadcaster Heart and Soul TV, was arrested on February 24 and charged with incitement for covering war veterans who called for the resignation of President Emmerson Mnangagwa and opposed proposals to extend his term. If found guilty, he could be jailed for up to five years and fined up to US$700 under the 2021 Cyber and Data Protection Act.

Mhlanga remains in pretrial detention at the capital’s Harare Remand Prison, an overcrowded facility with harsh conditions considered “not fit for animals.”

Chris Mhike, the journalist’s lawyer, told CPJ that Mhlanga’s imprisonment has affected his health, with the journalist looking frail and suffering body aches. “There’s no running away from the fact that he has suffered terribly from this episode. His part-time studies are disrupted,” Mhike told CPJ, adding, “after these painful weeks in prison, his health has notably deteriorated.”

“What is happening is actually an attempt to try and make sure that we silence all journalists who are doing their work,” said Perfect Mswathi Hlongwane, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, in an interview about Mhlanga’s detention. “This is bad for the profession, this is bad for the country.”

Sanctions for people who ‘demonize’ the president

Zanu-PF, the ruling party since independence in 1980, is facing internal tensions. The party last year adopted a motion to try to amend the constitution to extend Mnangagwa’s time in office beyond the 2028 completion of his second, final term.

Amid the intraparty strife, government officials have sought to tamp down on rhetoric they view as insufficiently loyal to Mnangagwa, whether from politicians or the media. Home Affairs Minister Kazembe Kazembe recently threatened criminal sanctions against people who “insult and demonise the Office of the President,” while Information Minister Jenfan Muswere warned broadcasters against advocating for the government’s overthrow.

A war veteran that Mhlanga interviewed, Blessed Geza, was among Zanu-PF members who sharply opposed the extension. Geza was expelled from the party earlier in March and has been calling for protests. Mnangagwa says he will leave office at the end of his current term.

In its attempt to silence the press, the government is employing the tried and tested strategies of jailing independent journalists and introducing laws to restrict freedom of expression.

Prominent journalist Hopewell Chin’ono faced repeated harassment and was arrested several times in 2020 and 2021. He was initially denied bail during his latest detention, in January 2021, until Zimbabwe’s High Court freed him after three weeks in prison. Journalist Jeffrey Moyo, whose work has appeared in The New York Times and other foreign media, was also arrested and initially denied bail in 2021. After spending more than a year in prison, Moyo was convicted of breaking the country’s immigration laws and given a two-year suspended sentence.

On March 12, Muswere announced plans for new social media legislation, citing the need to regulate unethical journalism and govern “ghost accounts operated by individuals seeking to demonise their own country.”

Muswere has also sponsored the Broadcasting Services Amendment Bill, which the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, passed on March 4. The bill, awaiting Senate approval, would entrench Mnangagwa’s control over broadcasting by removing requirements that the president consider recommendations from a parliamentary committee in appointing Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe board members.

‘I feel unsafe’

Even when threats don’t come from the government, failure to address press freedom violations can leave journalists fearful.

Three days after journalist Dumisani Mawere published a February 9 report on his local WhatsApp group accusing a private security employee of sexual misconduct with a minor, two of the company’s staff threatened him by phone before seeking him out at his home in the northern town of Kariba. When Mawere complained to the police, they summoned the alleged offenders, who returned to threaten the journalist, he said.

“They charged at me, pointed fingers at me, clenched their fists, and issued direct death threats — explicitly reminding me that ‘Kariba is very small,’ implying that I could easily be killed,” Mawere, a journalist with Kasambabezi community radio station, told CPJ, adding that he was frustrated that the police let the suspects go. “Right now, I feel unsafe and vulnerable in my work as a journalist.”

CPJ’s phone calls and messages to national police spokesperson Paul Nyathi, National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Angelina Munyeriwa, and government spokesperson Nick Mangwana went unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Li, who is a Chinese citizen and goes by the name Fucha, was arrested in March 2023 by national security officers, then held in secret detention after he returned home to visit relatives in the financial hub Shanghai.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, which is responsible for relations with the self-governing island,  said Li was convicted by a Shanghai court in February and fined 50,000 yuan ($6,900), office spokesperson Chen Binhua told a news conference on Wednesday. He said the publisher pleaded guilty and did not appeal.

“China must stop persecuting journalists for their work and release Li Yanhe,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “The free flow of information is vital for societies to flourish. China’s crackdown on press freedom will not help the world’s second-largest economy to achieve peace and prosperity. Let Li Yanhe be reunited with his family.”

After he immigrated to Taiwan, Li founded Gusa Press, which has published books critical of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. He also hosts a program on Radio Taiwan International about Chinese politics and current affairs. Gusa Press said it was “saddened“ by the sentence and declined to comment further.

Taiwan and China split in 1949 during the civil war that brought the Chinese Communist Party to power in Beijing. The Chinese government claims Taiwan as its territory and opposes what it views as separatist activity on the island, which has not declared formal independence.

China was the world’s largest jailer of journalists, with at least 50 behind bars, in CPJ’s latest annual prison census on December 1, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The groups said in a joint statement, led by CPJ, that the 26-year-old journalist’s case raises “serious concerns” over unjustifiably long pretrial detention and allegations that authorities had planted the weapons that led to Cumpio’s arrest in February 2020.

The journalist concluded her testimony on Monday at a local court, defending herself against charges of illegal firearms possession and terrorism financing, which she denies. If convicted, she faces up to 40 years in prison. 

No verdict date has been set while a trial continues for those co-accused with Cumpio. CPJ has been monitoring the journalist’s trial.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“The decision to return journalist José Rubén Zamora to prison is a blatant act of judicial persecution. This case represents a dangerous escalation in the repression of independent journalism,” said Cristina Zahar, CPJ’s Latin America program coordinator, in São Paulo. “We call on authorities to release him immediately, stop using the justice system to silence critical journalism, and to respect press freedom and due process.”

Zamora’s return to jail on money laundering charges that have been widely condemned as politically motivated was ordered by Judge Erick García, who had initially granted Zamora house arrest on Oct. 18, 2024. García said during Monday’s hearing that he and his staff had been threatened and intimidated by unknown individuals, according to a report by Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre.

Zamora, 67, was first arrested on July 29, 2022, and spent more than 800 days in pretrial detention before being placed under house arrest. A pioneering investigative journalist, Zamora has faced decades of harassment and persecution for his work, which CPJ has extensively documented. He received CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award in 1995 for his commitment to independent journalism. His newspaper, elPeriódico, was forced to shut down in 2023.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“The decision to return journalist José Rubén Zamora to prison is a blatant act of judicial persecution. This case represents a dangerous escalation in the repression of independent journalism,” said Cristina Zahar, CPJ’s Latin America program coordinator, in São Paulo. “We call on authorities to release him immediately, stop using the justice system to silence critical journalism, and to respect press freedom and due process.”

Zamora’s return to jail on money laundering charges that have been widely condemned as politically motivated was ordered by Judge Erick García, who had initially granted Zamora house arrest on Oct. 18, 2024. García said during Monday’s hearing that he and his staff had been threatened and intimidated by unknown individuals, according to a report by Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre.

Zamora, 67, was first arrested on July 29, 2022, and spent more than 800 days in pretrial detention before being placed under house arrest. A pioneering investigative journalist, Zamora has faced decades of harassment and persecution for his work, which CPJ has extensively documented. He received CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award in 1995 for his commitment to independent journalism. His newspaper, elPeriódico, was forced to shut down in 2023.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

In a March 4 pretrial hearing, Georgia’s western Batumi City Court rejected motions to release Amaghlobeli, director of independent news outlets Netgazeti and Batumelebi, and to dismiss the charge against her of assaulting a police officer. If convicted, Amaghlobeli faces a minimum four-year prison sentence, in a case that is widely seen as disproportionate and in retaliation for her journalism.

“Georgian authorities’ prosecution of media manager Mzia Amaghlobeli is clearly punitive and is all the more jarring given rampant impunity for brutal police attacks on journalists,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Authorities should release Amaghlobeli immediately.”

The trial is due to begin on March 18, local journalist Irma Dimitradze told CPJ.

Amaghlobeli has been behind bars since her January 11 arrest, when she began a hunger strike that lasted 38 days.

Amaghlobeli was not covering the protests when she was arrested, but human rights groups calling for her release believe she is being punished for her outlets’ reporting on alleged abuses by authorities, including the police. 

The journalist’s lawyer Juba Katamadze told CPJ that Amaghlobeli had been unlawfully detained earlier that evening for putting up a poster on a police station wall to protest her friend’s detention, and that her slapping of Batumi police chief Irakli Dgebuadze did not warrant prosecution under the serious charge of assaulting an officer. 

Amaghlobeli’s case comes amid a sharp decline in press freedom in Georgia. Dozens of journalists covering anti-government protests have been violently obstructed or beaten by police. Last week, the government proposed to introduce prison terms for non-compliance with an amended “foreign agent” law and to tighten control over broadcasters.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“Amid an unprecedented crackdown that has seen dozens of journalists incarcerated, Azerbaijan authorities’ singling out of Aziz Orujov from among thousands of Azerbaijanis living on unregistered land for jailing on dubious illegal construction charges is breathtakingly cynical,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director. “Authorities should immediately release Orujov and stop jailing journalists in retaliation for their work.”

The Sabail District Court in the capital, Baku, convicted Orujov of building a house for himself without authorization on a plot of land that he had purchased on the city outskirts.

The journalist’s lawyer, Bahruz Bayramov, told CPJ that although the land was not officially registered to Orujov, that’s also the case for around half a million homes in and around Baku, and that authorities had not jailed anyone besides Orujov for the offense. The fact that Orujov’s prosecution has taken place against the backdrop of authorities’ repeated announcement of plans to legalize such buildings shows that it was retaliation for his reporting, Bayramov said.

Kanal 13’s Azerbaijani YouTube channel, which has nearly 500,000 subscribers, regularly covers sensitive topics such as human rights violations and gives space to opposition views. In 2017, Orujov was jailed for a year in reprisal for the outlet’s work.

Azerbaijani police arrested Orujov on the illegal construction charges in November 2023. The next month, they added currency smuggling charges for alleged receipt of Western donor funds, arrested Kanal 13 reporter Shamo Eminov, and ordered Kanal 13 blocked. In December 2024, authorities suspended the currency smuggling case against both and released Eminov.

CPJ’s annual prison census found that Azerbaijan was among the world’s top 10 jailers of journalists in 2024. At least 24 journalists are currently jailed in retaliation for their work, most of them detained since late 2023 over Western funding allegations, amid a decline in relations between Azerbaijan and the West.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“Palina Pitkevich’s detention is yet another grim reminder that President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s government is the worst jailer of journalists in Europe and Central Asia,” said CPJ’s program director, Carlos Martínez de la Serna, in New York. “Belarusian authorities must drop all charges against Pitkevich and repeal the country’s extremism legislation instead of using it to silence dissent.”

Pitkevich was arrested in June, shortly after authorities designated the Press Club Belarus’ media literacy project Media IQ as an extremist group and listed her among its members, a representative of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an exiled advocacy and trade group, told CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.

If found guilty, she could be jailed for up to six years, according to the Criminal Code, which was amended to comply with a package of extremism legislation in 2021. Since then, the law to combat extremism has been used to ban more than 35 media outlets, according to BAJ.

CPJ is also investigating the case of freelance journalist Aleh Supruniuk, who has been missing since late January, and the detention of seven former journalists with the shuttered independent outlet Intex-Press, including reporter Ruslan Raviaka, on extremism charges in late 2024.

The BAJ representative confirmed to CPJ that Supruniuk was in detention. In 2021, Supruniuk was also briefly detained and his home was searched.

Belarus is the world’s fourth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 31 journalists behind bars, on December 1, 2024, when CPJ conducted its most recent annual prison census. Pitkevich was not included at the time due to a lack of publicly available information on her detention.

CPJ emailed the Belarusian Investigative Committee, the country’s law enforcement agency, for comment but did not receive any response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

San, a well-known political commentator and author also known by his pen names Huy Duc and Osin, was convicted under Article 331 of the penal code for 13 articles posted to his personal Facebook page between 2015 and 2024 and for independently collecting information, according to news reports.

“Journalist Truong Huy San was convicted and sentenced for gathering and publishing independent news, which Vietnam treats as a criminal offense,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “San and all independent journalists wrongfully held behind bars in Vietnam should be freed immediately and unconditionally.”  

CPJ was unable to immediately determine whether San intends to appeal his conviction. San has been in detention since his arrest in the capital Hanoi on June 1, 2024.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security, which manages the nation’s prisons and authorizes police to make political arrests, did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.

Vietnam tied with Iran and Eritrea as the seventh worst jailer of journalists worldwide, with at least 16 reporters behind bars on December 1, 2024, in CPJ’s latest annual global prison census.  

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Sai Zaw Thaike, who was sentenced to 20 years for sedition in 2023, has been subjected to “daily physical abuse” and “retaliatory torture” since January in Insein Prison in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon, the local news publication reported and its editor-in-chief Swe Win confirmed to CPJ.

The abuse is believed to be in response to Sai Zaw Thaike and two other prisoners informing visiting National Human Rights Commission representatives that prison staff were violating other inmates’ human rights, Myanmar Now said, citing a source connected to the prison. 

“Myanmar’s junta must identify and hold to account those responsible for assaulting journalist Sai Zaw Thaike,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “This type of abuse is cruel and grotesque. Myanmar’s military government must stop jailing and abusing journalists now,” Crispin said.  

CPJ was unable to independently confirm the allegations but torture in Myanmar custody has long been documented by groups such as the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners and reported to CPJ researchers. Former inmates have also reported beatings, burns, and electric shocks being administered at Insein Prison.

Myanmar ranked as the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 35 members of the press behind bars for their work, according to CPJ’s 2024 prison census.

Myanmar’s Ministry of Information did not immediately reply to CPJ’s email requesting comment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Police arrested Amaghlobeli, director of the independent media outlets Netgazeti and Batumelebi, on January 11 following an altercation with a local police chief. She was charged with attacking a police officer, which is widely seen as disproportionate and as retaliation for her journalism. If convicted, she faces a minimum four-year prison term.

Amaghlobeli went on a hunger strike following her arrest, but ended it on February 18, after 38 days, after doctors warned that her life was in danger.

Press freedom has sharply declined in Georgia in recent months under the ruling Georgian Dream party. Dozens of journalists covering mass anti-government protests have been violently obstructed or beaten by police, while authorities have enacted a “foreign agent” law targeting the press.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

We speak with NDN Collective founder and CEO Nick Tilsen, who was with Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier as he was released from a federal prison in Florida Monday after nearly half a century behind bars, and returned home with him to North Dakota. Peltier has always maintained his innocence for the 1975 killing of two FBI officers, and many activists have noted inconsistencies in his trial. In the final days of his presidency, former President Joe Biden granted Peltier clemency, commuting his life sentence. Peltier will remain on house arrest in the Turtle Mountain community in North Dakota. “Today I am finally free! They may have imprisoned me but they never took my spirit!” Peltier told supporters once he was released. “Thank you to all my supporters throughout the world who fought for my freedom.” Tilsen said it was “absolute pure joy” seeing him out of prison. “The release of Leonard Peltier is something that touches all of us, because all of us see a little bit of ourselves in Leonard Peltier.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The government is prosecuting San under Article 331 of the penal code, which outlaws “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the State,” according to multiple news reports. He could face up to seven years in jail if found guilty.

“Vietnamese journalist Truong Huy San was exercising, not abusing, his democratic freedoms in his independent reporting on Vietnam’s Communist Party-dominated politics, and he should not be punished for doing so,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “These wrongheaded criminal charges should be scrapped and San should be freed unconditionally now.”

San, a well-known political commentator and author also known by his pen names Huy Duc and Osin, was arrested by police on June 1, 2024, in the capital, Hanoi, while traveling to an event where he was scheduled to speak. He has been held in pre-trial detention since his arrest. CPJ could not confirm if a date has been set for the case to be heard in Hanoi People’s Court.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security, which manages the nation’s prisons and authorizes police to make political arrests, did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.

Vietnam was tied with Iran and Eritrea as the seventh worst jailer of journalists worldwide, with at least 16 reporters behind bars on December 1, 2024, in CPJ’s latest annual global prison census.  

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Boughalleb, a reporter with local independent channel Carthage Plus and local independent radio station Cap FM, was sentenced to six months in prison in April 2024 on defamation charges. But he has been imprisoned for nearly a year, as his sentence was increased to eight months on appeal and he has been charged on a second defamation count under Decree 54.

Tunisian authorities have used the cybercrime law to continue to arrest, prosecute, and silence members of the press, the letter states.

Read the letter here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

• Charges against those jailed: 7 for “fake” news; 4 for extremism; 4 for terrorism; 1 for cooperation with a foreign agent organization; 1 for espionage; 1 for participating in an illegal armed group; 1 for illegally handling explosives; 3 undisclosed.

Source: CPJ, OVD-Info

(Editor’s note: These numbers are being updated periodically)

‘Foreign agent’ sanctions

Since 2017, Russian authorities have designated hundreds of media outlets and journalists as foreign agents, requiring them to regularly submit detailed reports of their activities and expenses to authorities and to list their designation on published content. Failure to comply can result in fines, prosecution, and up to two years in jail.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs regularly adds journalists with outstanding foreign agent fines to its wanted list for people sought on criminal charges, meaning they could be held in pretrial detention if they traveled to Russia or a country that might extradite them to Russia.

December 2024

• Exiled blogger Yury Dud fined 45,000 rubles (US$449) on December 27 for failing to list his designation.

• Criminal foreign agent case opened against Sergey Smirnov, exiled editor-in-chief of independent news outlet Mediazona, for failing to comply with the law.   

• Criminal foreign agent case opened against Dmitry Kolezev, exiled former editor-in-chief of independent media outlet Republic, already sentenced to 7 ½ years in prison in absentia on charges of spreading fake news about the army.

• Seyran Ibrahimov, founder of Crimean Tatar newspaper Qirim, and editor-in-chief Bekir Mamutov fined a total of 44,000 rubles (US$438) on December 23 for failing to list the foreign agent designation of two outlets named in a report. Six fines were imposed on Ibrahimov and Mamutov over Qirim’s work in 2024, an anonymous representative with human rights group Crimean Solidarity told CPJ. 

• Arrest warrant issued for Tatyana Felgenhauer, exiled producer and anchor for Mediazona YouTube channel, on December 20 for failing to list her designation.

• Criminal foreign agent case opened against Alesya Marokhovskaya, exiled editor-in-chief of investigative site IStories, for failing to provide mandatory reports to the Ministry of Justice. Her parents’ home in the far eastern city of Magadan was searched on December 5.

• Exiled journalists Maxim Trudolyubov, Andrey Malgin, and Ayder Muzhsabaev fined 45,000 rubles (US$449) each on December 4 for failing to list their designation.

November 2024

• Exiled journalist Ilya Davlyatchin, with the media project Mozhem Obyasnit, twice fined a total of 60,000 rubles (US$598) on November 29 for failing to submit information about a foreign agent to an authorized body. Under a Russia-Belarus treaty, Davlyatchin was also added to Russia’s wanted list on November 25 after Belarus charged him with “facilitating extremist activity” by appearing on independent Poland-based Belsat TV, for which the penalty is up to seven years in jail.

• Exiled journalist Kirill Nabutov, who runs YouTube channel Nabutovy, fined 30,000 rubles (US$299) on November 28 for failing to register as a foreign agent. 

• Criminal case opened against exiled blogger Ilya Varlamov on November 25 for failing to list his designation.

• Exiled Mediazona journalist Alla Konstantinova fined 30,000 rubles (US$290) on November 23 for failing to submit a report on her activities.

• Journalist Alena Sadovskaya removed on November 13 from reporting on a court hearing for the foreign agent media outlet Caucasian Knot on the grounds her work could “negatively affect” the case.

• Exiled Mediazona editor-in-chief Sergey Smirnov, fined 50,000 rubles (US$483) on November 12 for failing to list his designation. Smirnov was previously fined four times, totaling 230,000 rubles (US$ 2,220), for failing to include both his and Mediazona’s listing on their content.

October 2024

• Exiled blogger and journalist Natalia Sevets-Ermolina added to the wanted list on October 31 for failing to list her designation.

• Exiled blogger and former journalist with exiled broadcaster Dozhd TV (TV Rain), Ilya Shepelin, fined 40,000 rubles (US$386) on October 15 for failing to list his designation.

• Exiled journalist Mikhail Rubin of the investigative news outlet Proekt fined 40,000 rubles (US$386) on October 11 for violation of the procedure for the activities of a foreign agent.

• Exiled foreign agent Natalya Baranova, who runs the Telegram channel “Experiencing activism,” learned she was added to the wanted list on or before September 24.

‘Undesirable’ organizations

Since 2021, numerous media outlets have been labeled undesirable, which means they are banned from operating in Russia. Anyone who participates in or works to organize the activities of such outlets faces up to six years in prison. It is also a crime to distribute the organizations’ content or donate to them.

A key target is the Latvia-based news site Meduza, which was blocked in Russia following its condemnation of the Ukraine war. The popular outlet is also listed as a foreign agent. Meduza’s CEO Galina Timchenko won CPJ’s 2022 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award.

December 2024

• Exiled journalist Dmitry Kartsev fined 10,000 (US$98) rubles on December 26 for participating in a Meduza podcast.

• Exiled Vladislav Gorin fined 10,000 rubles (US$98) on December 17 for hosting a Meduza podcast.

November 2024

• Exiled Meduza journalist Andrey Pertsev fined 5,000 rubles (US$49) on November 27 for participating in a 2023 talk show by German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

• Meduza journalist Elizaveta Antonova fined 14,000 rubles (US$135) on November 25 for her April interview with the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Voice of America.

• Exiled Meduza journalist Anton Khitrov fined 10,000 rubles (US$100) on November 20 for taking part in a Meduza live stream about censorship.

• Maria Ivanova, editor-in-chief of local media outlet Yakutsk Vecherniy, fined 10,000 rubles (US$98) on November 19 for two posts with links to reports by an unspecified undesirable organization.

• Arrest warrant issued on November 6 for exiled journalist Kirill Martynov for running two undesirable organizations as editor-in-chief of independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe and co-founder of the Free University.

• Exiled Meduza journalist Margarita Lyutova fined 5,000 rubles (US$48) on November 5 for appearing on the YouTube channel The Breakfast Show in 2023.

Sentenced to jail in absentia

Exiled journalists sentenced to jail in absentia would immediately be arrested if they traveled to Russia or a country that could extradite them to Russia.

2024

• Russian-American journalist and writer Masha Gessen sentenced on July 15 to 8 years on fake news charges.

• Former editor-in-chief of exiled Russian broadcaster Dozhd TV (TV Rain) Mikhail Zygar sentenced on July 23 to 8½ years on fake news charges.

• Former editor-in-chief of the independent media outlet Republic Dmitry Kolezev sentenced on August 6 to 7½ years on fake news charges.

2023

• Ilya Krasilshchik sentenced on June 28 to 8 years on fake news charges.

• Founder of investigative project Conflict Intelligence Team Ruslan Leviev sentenced on August 29 to 11 years on fake news charges.

• Video blogger Michael Nacke sentenced on August 29 to 11 years on fake news charges.

Legal action against international journalists

Russian courts issued arrest warrants in absentia for at least seven foreign journalists, previously charged with crossing into Russia’s Kursk region without permission as Ukrainian troops advanced on August 6, 2024. The penalty for illegal border crossings is up to five years in jail.

2025

• Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent Kathryn Diss and camera operation Fletcher Yeung, both U.S. citizens, on February 6.

• Britain’s The Sun newspaper’s defense editor Jerome Starkey on January 29.

2024

• German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle’s Nick Connolly on December 4.

• France 24’s Catherine Norris Trent on November 26.

• Romanian journalist Mircea Barbu who was on assignment for the news site HotNews on October 24.

• CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh on October 11.

• Italian public broadcaster RAI’s Stefania Battistini and Simone Traini on October 7.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) also filed criminal charges in 2024 against at least six other journalists for allegedly crossing into the Kursk region illegally:

• Swiss CH Media group correspondent Kurt Pelda on October 7.

• Ukrainian TV channel 1+1’s correspondent Natalia Nahorna on August 27.

• Ukrainian broadcaster Hromadske’s reporters Olesya Borovyk and Diana Butsko on August 22.

Denied international media accreditation

Since Ukraine’s full-scale invasion, Russia has revoked or failed to renew the media accreditation of at least seven international journalists:

2025

• French newspaper Le Monde’s correspondent Benjamin Quénelle on February 6.

2024

• German public broadcaster ARD’s Frank Aischmann and Sven Feller on November 27.

• Public broadcaster Austrian Radio and Television (ORF)’s Maria Knips-Witting on June 10.

• Spanish El Mundo newspaper’s correspondent  Xavier Colás on March 19.

2023

• Finnish newspaper correspondent Anna-Lena Laurén in May.

• Politico Europe Dutch journalist Eva Hartog on August 7.

2022

• Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat’s correspondent Arja Paananen in October.

See also:

Russia fines 11 journalists, restricts 2 outlets with anti-state laws — July to September 2024

Russia seeks to arrest, prosecute, fine, and restrict 13 exiled journalists — June to July 2024

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Baroshky’s lawyer, Revving Hruri, told CPJ via messaging app that the charges stem from a January 23, 2024 Facebook post in which Baroshky reported that political prisoner Mala Nazir had been kidnapped from the prison one day before his scheduled release.

In February, after Baroshky’s reporting was circulated widely in the local media, Zirka prison authorities sued the journalist for allegedly violating of Article 2 of the Misuse of Communication Devices law.

“We are deeply troubled by the sentencing of journalist Omed Baroshky over a Facebook post,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim MENA program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Iraqi Kurdish authorities must ensure that journalists are not criminalized for their reporting. We urge authorities to free Baroshky and allow him to continue his work without fear of retaliation.”

Hruri told CPJ that they presented the court with “multiple pieces of evidence proving that he is a journalist and should be tried under the press law, which does not allow imprisonment, but the court refused.”

Hruri said that while the court confirmed during the trial that Nazir had been transferred from the prison, “they alleged that Omed defamed the prison.”

CPJ contacted Aram Atrushi, the director of Zirka prison, for comment, but he declined to discuss the case.

Baroshky previously spent 18 months in jail from 2020 to 2022 under the same law over social media posts that criticized authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan. After his outlet Rast Media was raided and shut down in April 2023, he turned to Facebook as his main reporting platform.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

CPJ urges the EU to call for independent investigations into the deliberate targeting of journalists during the 15-month war in Gaza, for international journalists to be granted independent access to the territory, and for Israel to reform laws that restrict press freedom.

“The EU cannot continue to turn a blind eye to strong evidence of crimes of international law and the decimation of a generation of Palestinian journalists,” said Tom Gibson, CPJ’s EU representative. “If accountability, justice, and access demands cannot be met, EU leaders must call for a suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.” 

The agreement sets out the EU’s legal and institutional framework for political dialogue and economic cooperation with Israel, including respect for human rights as an essential element.

The Israel-Gaza war has taken an unprecedented toll on journalists since October 7, 2023, with at least 167 journalists and media workers killed, overwhelmingly in Gaza. It has been the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.

According to CPJ’s investigations, at least 11 journalists and two media workers were directly targeted by Israeli forces; the deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime under international law.

CPJ has documented multiple other abuses in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon, that require investigation, including assaults, threats, and allegations of torture during the war. Israel was the world’s second-worst jailer of journalists in CPJ’s latest annual prison census, with 43 Palestinian journalists in Israeli custody on December 1, 2024.

At least 10 journalists are being held indefinitely without charge in the West Bank. The EU should join the repeated calls by U.N. special mandate holders for Israel to end this practice, which the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has repeatedly found unlawful.

Throughout the war, Israel has obstructed and punished media coverage and banned international reporters from Gaza, except for on rare trips with the military. Israel must revoke its censorship laws, including one used to ban Al Jazeera and retaliatory directives against domestic media. Israeli, Egyptian, and Palestinian authorities must immediately allow unconditional access for all journalists to enter and operate in Gaza.

The European Union must be true to its values and support these demands.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Mahdi Ansary’s unjust sentence is indicative of the Taliban’s continued brutality and suppression of press freedom in Afghanistan,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Taliban authorities must immediately release Ansary and Sayed Rahim Saeedi, the other known detained journalist, as well as all anyother Afghan journalists imprisoned by the group without public knowledge.”

The start of Ansary’s prison term was set as October 5, 2024, when he was apprehended while returning home from his office in Kabul.

The General Directorate of Intelligence confirmed Ansary’s detention but withheld information regarding his whereabouts or the reasons for his arrest. Ansary, who is a member of Afghanistan’s persecuted Hazara ethnic minority, had been reporting on killings and atrocities against the community under Taliban rule.

On October 8, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told CPJ via messaging app that the journalist was working with “banned [media] networks” and had engaged in “illegal activities.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

A total of 361 journalists were behind bars on December 1, 2024, the second-highest number since the global record set in 2022, when CPJ documented at least 370 imprisoned in connection with their work. The main drivers of journalist imprisonment in 2024 were ongoing authoritarian repression, war, and political or economic instability. Many countries, including China, Israel, Tunisia, and Azerbaijan, set new records for imprisonment.

“These numbers should be a wake-up call for us all,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “A rise in attacks on journalists almost always precedes a rise in attacks on other freedoms – the freedom to give and receive information, the freedom to assemble and move freely, the freedom to protest.”

“These journalists are being arrested and punished for exposing political corruption, environmental degradation, financial wrongdoing – all issues that matter to our day-to-day lives.”

Asia remained the region with the highest number of journalists behind bars in 2024, accounting for more than 30% (111) of the global total. In addition to the leading jailers – China, Myanmar, and Vietnam – journalists were also behind bars in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines. 

Pervasive censorship in China, for years one of the world’s top jailers of journalists, makes it notoriously difficult to determine the exact number of journalists jailed there. However, jailings are not limited to the mainland, traditionally considered highly repressive. Those jailed include British citizen and Hong Kong-based entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, founder of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, who has been held in solitary confinement in Hong Kong since 2020 and is currently on trial on retaliatory charges of collusion with foreign forces. 

A total of 108 journalists were imprisoned in the Middle East and North Africa, almost half of those detained by Israel. Last year, U.N. legal experts determined that Israel violated international law in its detention of three Palestinian journalists. CPJ has previously called on Israel to investigate the cases of these and others held in Israeli custody for lengthy periods without charge, hold accountable those responsible for these rights violations, and provide compensation to journalists who have been arbitrarily detained. 

Outside of Belarus (31) and Russia (30), Azerbaijan’s (13) continued crackdown on independent media made it one of the leading jailers of journalists in Europe and Central Asia in 2024. Turkey (11) is no longer among the top jailers of journalists but pressure on independent media remains high.

This is also the case in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, where the number of jailings is lower than in other regions but where threats against journalism persist. Mexico, for example, has no journalists in jail but is one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist outside a war zone. In Nigeria, with four journalists behind bars on December 1, dozens of journalists were attacked and detained as they sought to cover protests and civil unrest. Senegal, which held one journalist in prison on the 2024 census date, also arrested and assaulted journalists covering political protests.

Globally, CPJ found that more than 60% – 228 – of the imprisoned journalists faced broad anti-state charges, including often-vague charges of terrorism or extremism in countries including Myanmar, Russia, Belarus, Tajikistan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Venezuela, Turkey, India, and Bahrain. These accusations were commonly leveled against reporters from marginalized ethnic groups whose work focused on their communities.

Tackling journalist imprisonment is a key focus for CPJ, which provides journalists with financial support to cover the cost of legal fees, as well as resources to help journalists and newsrooms better prepare for or mitigate threats of legal harassment and action. The organization also makes concerted efforts to advocate for the release of journalists whose cases could revert or stem the tide of criminalization.

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About the Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. We defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.

CPJ’s prison census is a snapshot of those incarcerated at 12:01 a.m. on December 1, 2024. It does not include the many journalists imprisoned and released throughout the year; accounts of those cases can be found at http://cpj.org. CPJ’s data includes detailed information about each imprisoned journalist in every country listed, including the circumstances around their jailing, legal proceedings, and advocacy around each particular case.

Media contact: press@cpj.org

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

In late 2024, CPJ’s review of court documents and interviews with Bassène, his co-accused, and witnesses found that the investigation into the journalist was severely flawed. Several who were subsequently acquitted told CPJ that they were forced to implicate the journalist or sign inaccurate interview records. CPJ also found that the investigation relied on inconsistent evidence regarding Bassène’s whereabouts on the day of the killings and reasons to doubt the authenticity of emails purportedly sent by him. Bassène said he was mistreated in custody; medical documents describe an injury to his ear as a result of “trauma.”

According to Sané, secretary of the southern Senegalese village of Toubacouta in Casamance’s main city of Ziguinchor, the only time he had ever spoken to Bassène was when Bassène called him on the day of the massacre to ask for information about the killings. At the time, Bassène was close to finishing his fourth book on the conflict between Senegalese government forces and the separatist Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC). One appeal court upheld his sentence in 2024; a second appeal against his conviction is currently with Senegal’s Supreme Court.

CPJ’s investigation also found new information linking Bassène’s imprisonment to his work, with court documents showing that prosecutors cited Bassène’s reporting activities, including phone calls and emails, before and after the killings in arguments for his conviction. These details led to his inclusion as the only Senegalese journalist in CPJ’s 2024 census of media members jailed around the world. Senegal, which elected a new reform-promising president and parliament in 2024, was listed among the top five jailers of journalists in Africa in CPJ’s 2023 census.

Threatened for his work

Bassène had dedicated most of his 20-year career to covering the conflict between the Senegalese government and the MFDC, which has sought an independent territory in Casamance since 1982. His interest began in college, when he wrote a thesis on people displaced by the fighting. He published his first book in 2013 on the late rebel leader Abbé Augustin Diamacoune Senghor. Bassène planned on calling his fourth book “A Conflict that Feeds More than it Kills,” and it would have detailed how certain people profited from the fighting, including local leaders, peace-negotiating NGOs, and the traffickers of illegal timber. Bassène had a reputation for dogged reporting, covering all sides of the conflict and traveling to rebel-held areas for his research. “My principle has always been to go and get information from the source,” he told CPJ in one of several phone interviews from prison between September to December 2024.

“It was a rather explosive book in which he mentioned organizations by name and evoked the problem of wood cutting,” Xavier Diatta, a friend of Bassène, told CPJ.

Bassène knew that his reporting came with risks. In the foreword to his third book, published in January 2017, he recalled receiving threats from fighters on both sides and being labeled by critics “as a rebel, or as a spy in the pay of the State of Senegal or the MFDC.”  Bassene’s wife, Odette Victorine Coly, told CPJ, “he was no longer taking calls from numbers he didn’t know because he was receiving so many threats.” In September 2017, Bassène told Diatta in a message reviewed by CPJ, “I am finishing my research by May [2018] to end my work on the crisis and focus on my family because I am also being threatened.”

Bassène wasn’t the only journalist under scrutiny for covering the rebel movement. In 2005, authorities arrested the entire staff of the private radio station Sud FM in the capital, Dakar, and detained its correspondent Ibrahima Gassama in Ziguinchor for interviewing the rebel leader of an MFDC faction. Other journalists have also been expelled or intimidated for reporting on a conflict that has killed thousands of people and remains a sensitive issue in Senegal.

Violence in the forest

By the end of 2017, Bassène had begun to worry about the risk of increased violence associated with illegal logging in the forest, which both authorities and rebels had profited from over the years. A local faction of the MFDC had promised to “take care of protecting Casamance’s natural resources,” accusing the Senegalese authorities of encouraging the “squandering” of the forest. The group’s armed wing “Atika,” meanwhile, said it would “crack down on any woodcutter who ventures into the Boffa Bayotte forest.” The statements followed the arrest in November 2017 by Senegalese authorities of four residents of Toubacouta, who were members of an independent inter-village committee for the protection of the forest, following an altercation with illegal loggers.

“[The MFDC] statements were becoming more and more threatening,” Bassène told CPJ, adding that armed men often attacked loggers in the forest and that 10 people were killed in 2011.

Before the massacre, Bassène shared his concern that violence in the forest could escalate with several people close to the government, including Diatta, an adviser to the late Senegalese prime minister Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne, Bachir Ba, then regional director of national public broadcaster RTS, and Jean-Marie François Biagui, a former MFDC secretary general turned civilian who remained active in Senegalese politics, the three told CPJ in interviews. Diatta said that he informed the gendarmerie about Bassène’s warnings when he was held over his links to the journalist and questioned for three days following the killings. But Bassène’s efforts are not mentioned in court documents.

Bassène has remained behind bars since his 2018 arrest by masked gendarmes, who scaled the walls of his home. Virtually all of the 25 other co-accused have been acquitted. CPJ traveled nearly 500 kilometers (310 miles) south from Senegal’s capital, Dakar, to villages in the area, including Toubacouta and Bourofaye Diola, to speak to some of the defendants and others close to the case. Seven of the co-accused told CPJ that while the prosecution presented them as his accomplices, they were interrogated under duress and authorities attributed false testimonies to them.

Alleged meetings

During the trial, the prosecution alleged that Bassène planned the killings, accusing him of involvement in two meetings with villagers and village representatives held on December 22, 2017, and January 3, 2018. At these meetings, authorities alleged that Bassène promised that he would “manage” the forest problem by calling on the rebels to defend the forest. A third meeting was also allegedly held in Bassène’s absence on January 5, 2018, during which the massacre was said to have been coordinated according to his plans. But nine of the alleged participants in these meetings told CPJ that they were unaware of any such gatherings and had never heard Bassène say such things.

Those people – Maurice Badji, an uncle of Bassène and chief of the village of Bourofaye Diola, Ibou Sané, Abdou Sané, Jean Christophe Diatta, Abdoulaye Diédhiou, Abdou Karim Sagna, Alassane Badji, Alphousseyni Badji, Dou Sagna – also told CPJ they had been forced by the authorities to sign transcripts of interviews with them that had been altered to include inaccurate information. All but three – Maurice Badji, Dou Sagna, and Abdou Sané – said they had never met Bassène. According to the court documents, four additional defendants – Papya Sané, Nfally Diémé, Cheikh Oumar Diédhiou, and Lansana Badji – said that they never participated in the alleged meetings.

Another defendant, Jean Baptiste Badji, said in an interrogation he had heard Bassène at one of the meetings saying that “blood is going to flow,” but retracted his testimony in court. Jean Baptiste Badji died after the trial. “In prison, when I asked Jean why he said those false things, he cried and said he was afraid, and gendarmes brutalized him,” Dou Sagna told CPJ.

Conflicting evidence

According to court documents, the gendarmerie claimed Bassène’s phone was geolocated in the Boffa Bayotte forest, alongside the phones belonging to several of his co-defendants. But CPJ spoke to four people who said they were with Bassène in the Kandialang neighborhood of Ziguinchor at the time of the killings. Coly, Bassène’s wife, and two others from the area who asked not to be named for safety reasons confirmed that they had seen Bassène and spoken with him on the afternoon of January 6, 2018, which is when the massacre is said to have occurred. Alain Diédhiou, the journalist’s neighbor, told CPJ he was with Bassène at a local football game at that time.

Bassène told CPJ that he learned about the tragedy on the radio while he was at the football field with Diédhiou and then had several phone calls with MFDC members to try to find out what happened. Those calls would later be used to support accusations that he planned and instigated the killings.

‘Incriminating’ phone calls

The journalist told CPJ that he began researching the murders by making phone calls the moment he learned about it. “An event of this magnitude could not fail to feature in this book, especially as I had been following the case before the massacre,” he told CPJ. One call was to César Atoute Badiate, the leader of the local MFDC faction, who was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for complicity with Bassène. “I asked him if his men were involved and apparently he didn’t know about it yet, he had promised to come back to me,” Bassène said. The prosecution also cited Bassène’s call after the killings with Oumar Ampoi Bodian, an MFDC representative who was convicted for complicity in the murders and then acquitted on appeal in August 2024. Bodian told CPJ that he had called the journalist, assuming Bassène would be on the ground investigating.

According to the prosecution, these calls were made as part of Bassène’s participation in the killings, but transcripts of the calls were never produced in court despite the requests of the journalist’s legal team.

False testimony under duress

Court documents from the trial reveal a striking pattern: defendants in the case repeatedly and vigorously contested statements attributed to them in the minutes of their interrogations and insisted they had “made confessions” after being subjected to “acts of torture” without the presence of a lawyer. In addition to Sané, who was interrogated at gunpoint, at least four other defendants in the case told CPJ they were violently interrogated about Bassène’s alleged involvement in the killings, and that false testimony attributed to them about Bassène was later introduced in the trial.

Abdou Karim Sagna, a resident of Toubacouta and one of Bassène’s main co-defendants who was described as the executor of the killings and later acquitted, told CPJ he did not know Bassène before his detention. Sagna described his arrest and the search of his home, which was carried out in the middle of the night by armed and masked gendarmes. He also said officers asked him about Bassène and the case as they slapped and hit him, subjected him to humiliating verbal and physical harassment, and shocked him with an electric baton. “We were called one by one only to be forced to sign and then referred to the prosecutor’s office without knowing the content of the interrogation minutes,” Sagna said.

Jean Christophe, another defendant, told CPJ that he was punched and subjected to other mistreatment while officers asked him if he was in the forest with Bassène on the day of the killings. He said he told the officers that he did not know Bassène, but his testimony had been changed when presented during the trial. Two others, brothers Alassane and Alphousseyni Badji, told CPJ that authorities also violently interrogated them and misrepresented their testimony in court.

Brutal interrogations

Bassène also faced brutal treatment, he told CPJ. After his arrest, gendarmes delayed his interrogation for four days, claiming he was “still lucid” or not sufficiently exhausted to divulge keyinformation during questioning. Bassène was held naked, handcuffed at his feet and hands for those four days, Yama Diédhiou, another suspect in the case, who saw the journalist in detention, told CPJ.

When the interrogation finally began, the blows came swift and fast. “They beat me constantly, stripped me naked and applied an electric baton to my genitals when they didn’t like my answers,” Bassène said. “When they paused the interrogation during the night, a gendarme made sure…that I was not sleeping by knocking on the door every time I dozed off.” Both Diédhiou and Omar Sané, arrested in a separate case and held with Bassène, said that instead of a jail cell, the journalist was kept in a toilet stall with no light, infested with mosquitos and other insects.

Bassène said that when he refused to “sign an autograph” on the minutes of the investigation, one of the gendarmes slapped him, causing his right ear to bleed. After complaining of pain and hearing loss, Bassène was seen by a doctor in 2019 and treated for “perforation of the right eardrum following a trauma,” according to medical documents reviewed by CPJ. Those documents also confirm the loss of hearing in his right ear and severe deterioration in eyesight, which Bassène says was due to the tight bandage that was forced over his face for nearly a day after his arrest. Bassène also said he was denied access to a lawyer during the interrogation, though he obtained one later in court.

In December 2024, CPJ submitted a letter to the Senegalese gendarmerie requesting comment on the conditions of Bassène’s interrogation, but did not receive a response. In January 2025, gendarmes called Bassène’s wife in order to interview her on the allegations of torture, she told CPJ.

Questionable emails

As part of its case, the prosecution also alleged that Bassène was a member of the MFDC communications team and sent about 21 emails in that capacity to Ousmane Tamba, an exiled member of MFDC’s political wing who owns the news website Journal du Pays and is close to MFDC leader Badiate.

Bassène told CPJ that his last email discussion with Tamba was when he was writing his second book, published in 2015, documenting the origin of the conflict. Tamba declined to respond to CPJ’s written request for comment, sent via Bodian, the MFDC’s representative, saying in November 2024 that he was “not involved in any way” in the case.

In one of the emails in the court file, it appeared that Bassène had identified himself as part of the MFDC’s team in written responses to questions from Journal du Pays about the conflict, which were dated December 4, 2017. CPJ, using the digital archiving tool Wayback Machine, found that the interview was published at least three months earlier and cited Bassène as a journalist, writer, and observer of the conflict.

Journal du Pays told CPJ via its official email address in 2018 that Bassène was an experienced journalist and specialist on the Casamance conflict who gave “dozens of interviews” to their outlet.

Bassène denied sending the emails and being a member of the MFDC communications team. In court, Bassène’s legal team also questioned the authenticity of an email that was addressed only to “@/” and another allegedly sent in February 2018, a month after Bassène was detained without access to phone or email.

Ciré Clédor Ly, one of Bassène’s lawyers in the case said in an interview with local media that Bassène – who was forced to give authorities access to his email account – repeatedly requested an expert opinion on whether the messages had come directly from his account. The court refused.

In the Ziguinchor prison, where he spends his days reading, writing, and assisting the nurses to care for other inmates, Bassène waits for his appeal to the Supreme Court to be considered.

“I’m ready to spend my life in prison, but what I can’t stand is the injustice of being told that I wasn’t arrested because of my work as a journalist,” he said.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Moussa Ngom.

As part of CPJ’s holistic support for imprisoned journalists, prison support grants can be used alongside ongoing advocacy on behalf of journalists behind bars, and reporting and documentation of their case or trial. In 2024, CPJ supported 58 journalists with prison support, making up just over 10% of all individual financial grants journalists received from CPJ that year. That is the highest percentage CPJ has provided in prison support grants since 2020, and the largest-ever number of prison support grants in a single year, reflecting both the near record number of imprisoned journalists globally, and the scale of their needs behind bars. 

In 2024, prison support was holistically combined with legal support, medical support, and trauma support. A prison sentence can cause or exacerbate a journalist’s mental health or medical issues, which CPJ’s grants can help alleviate. Legal fees are often covered alongside a grant for prison support so journalists can appropriately fight cases against them. And highlighting the unjustly long prison sentences some journalists receive, CPJ has provided multiple prison support grants to individual journalists over several years. 

In 2024, the country that had the greatest need for CPJ’s prison support grants was Belarus. One of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, Belarus held 31 in prison as of December 1, 2024, according to CPJ’s prison data. During the year, CPJ for the first time helped almost the entire population of imprisoned journalists in a single country by providing a prison support grant to nearly every imprisoned Belarusian journalist through a partnership with the Belarusian Journalists Association (BAJ). In total, 23 journalists received grants, which not only covered basic necessities such as medication and food in prison but also allowed families to send care packages to their loved ones. Crucially, these grants fostered a feeling of solidarity, according to BAJ. That made the journalists feel less alone as they fight for their freedom. Imprisoned journalists who also received prison support grants in other countries mirrored the world’s top jailers of journalists in 2024, including Myanmar, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, and Iran.

Although not every journalist included in CPJ’s prison census received financial assistance from CPJ—some do not require it, while for others it may be too dangerous to receive foreign money—CPJ’s prison support grants underscore the complex and often appalling conditions many journalists endure in incarceration. 

CPJ also helped journalists once they were released from prison, supporting 15 journalists with post-prison support grants in 2024. These grants can help journalists put their lives back together and adjust to their newfound freedom. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Lucy Westcott.

“Mohamed Al-Miyahi’s appearance before the Houthi’s non-state judicial system is yet another attempt by Houthi forces to legitimize his detention and their broader attacks on press freedom,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “Al-Miyahi must be released and his abductors must be held to account.”

Al-Miyahi was arrested in September 2024 by security forces affiliated with the Houthi group and was not heard from for over a month. His arrest came amid a new wave of detentions by the Houthis in September targeting aid workers and critics of Houthi rule in Yemen.

Al-Miyahi is a well-known Yemeni journalist who has written for several media outlets, including the website of Yemeni TV channel Belqees. His last article for Belqees, published before his arrest, criticized the Houthi group’s governance in Yemen. 

In a separate case, Yemeni journalist Ahmed Maher, who was arrested in August 2022 and sentenced to four years in prison in May 2024, was acquitted by the Aden-based Specialized Criminal Court of Appeal on December 25, 2024. Despite the acquittal, the Specialized Criminal Prosecution has refused to release him without a “commercial guarantee” from a guarantor—a condition his family is unable to fulfill. Under Yemeni law, a guarantor ensures a detainee’s court appearance and legal compliance through financial or personal commitment, with a commercial guarantor doing so via a legally registered business.

Both the Houthis and the Southern Transitional Council, the de facto authority in southern Yemen, have arbitrarily detained and subjected Yemeni journalists to enforced disappearance over the years.

CPJ emailed Houthi spokesperson Mohammad Abdulsalam for comment, but did not receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The closed-door trial was held in the city’s pretrial detention center, with authorities reportedly classifying the case as secret.

“With Tajik authorities having all but obliterated the independent press over the past decade, the hefty sentence meted out to Ahmad Ibrohim shows the lengths they will go to stamp out critical reporting,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Tajik authorities should immediately release Ibrohim, along with seven other journalists serving lengthy sentences on retaliatory charges, and reform the country’s repressive media environment.”

Law enforcement officers in Kulob arrested Ibrohim on August 12 on charges of bribing a state security services officer.

Radio Ozodi, the local service of U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, reported that Ibrohim’s arrest appeared to have been a setup.

The only independent outlet in Tajikistan’s southern Khatlon Province, Payk has previously complained of pressure from local authorities in retaliation for critical reporting.

Radio Ozodi also reported that investigators questioned around a hundred local officials who had paid Payk for services such as for subscriptions or purchases of Ibrohim’s books, and that prosecutors summoned around 20 of them to appear in court — alleging that Ibrohim had extorted them.

Ibrohim denied the charges. In a letter to Rustam Emomali, the chairman of parliament and son of Tajikistan’s president, reviewed by CPJ, he said that none of those who testified in court had said that he extorted them, only that they subscribed to his newspaper. He described the extremism allegation as “risible,” saying he had spent his life fighting against extremism and had been threatened by Tajik members of the militant Islamic State group over his articles on the subject.

A source familiar with the journalist’s case, who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation, told CPJ that Ibrohim had defended himself, as lawyers either demanded excessive fees or refused to take the case for fear of reprisal.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The census covers all countries that have imprisoned journalists globally in 2024, as well as providing background information on each imprisoned journalist. It also provides recommendations on what needs to be done to counter criminalization of journalism globally. 

Thematic analysis by CPJ experts highlights the trends driving the increase in journalists imprisoned for their work in recent years. CPJ’s annual prison census is a snapshot of journalists incarcerated as of midnight on December 1, 2024.

WHAT: CPJ’s annual census of journalists jailed globally as of December 1, 2024

WHEN: January 16, 2025, 9:30 a.m. ET/2:30 p.m. GMT 

WHERE: www.cpj.org

WHO: CPJ experts are available to speak in multiple languages about the key findings and what the data portend for press freedom in the year ahead. To request an interview, please reach out to press@cpj.org.

###

About the Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. We defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.

Note to editors: 

Census materials will be translated to various languages, and CPJ experts are also available for interviews in multiple languages. 

Media contact:

press@cpj.org

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Zamora, 67, spent 813 days in prison, accused of money laundering, until he was granted house arrest on October 18, 2024. The following month, a Guatemalan appeals court ordered Zamora back to jail, but he has remained in house arrest until his appeal is heard.

“It’s inhumane what the Guatemalan judicial system is doing to journalist José Rubén Zamora,” said CPJ’s Latin American program coordinator, Cristina Zahar. “His presumption of innocence was shattered for more than two years when he was arbitrarily detained. He must be immediately released.”

In June 2023, Zamora was sentenced to six years imprisonment on money laundering charges, which were criticized as politically motivated.

CPJ has repeatedly urged the Guatemalan government to end Zamora’s prosecution and the harassment of his family and his journalist colleagues.

CPJ called the Supreme Court but didn’t get an immediate response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

A freelance journalist, Jean lacked financial support from the outlets he worked for to cover his steep medical bills. CPJ stepped in to cover the cost of the journalist’s hospital stay, surgery, a new glass eye and, eventually, glasses, so he could continue reporting.

Jean is one of more than 600 journalists who received a combined $1 million in financial grants in 2024 from CPJ’s Gene Roberts Emergency Fund. In addition to medical care, the funds can be used to cover costs associated with exile, legal fees, and basic living supplies in prison. Overall, CPJ drastically stepped up its assistance work last year, helping more than 3,000 journalists with financial grants, safety training, and other kinds of support amid rising threats to the media and declining press freedom.

Here are five other ways CPJ’s Emergencies department helped journalists in 2024:

——————

Supporting journalists in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon to cover and survive war

The Israel-Gaza war continues to be one of the deadliest conflicts for journalists since CPJ began keeping records in 1992. Israeli military operations have killed 152 journalists in Gaza and six in Lebanon; Hamas killed two Israeli journalists in its October 7, 2023 attack. As Israel conducts what rights groups call ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, the country continues to forbid foreign journalists from accessing the territory without military accompaniment, leaving the coverage to the beleaguered local press.

In February, CPJ gave $300,000 to three organizations supporting Gaza’s journalists: the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, and Filastiniyat. Through these grants, journalists were able to access food, basic necessities like blankets and tents for shelter, and journalistic equipment including cameras, phones, and laptops so they can continue to be the world’s eyes and ears on Gaza.

“We keep hitting what feels like rock bottom, only to discover even deeper levels of suffering and loss,” Hoda Osman, executive editor of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, told CPJ. “Yet Palestinian journalists persist. Their resilience cannot be overstated, and their work is essential—especially with foreign journalists barred from entering Gaza—but it is utterly unsustainable without continuous and significant support.”

As the war spread to Lebanon, CPJ provided grants to Lebanese freedom of expression groups the Maharat Foundation and the Samir Kassir Foundation to help journalists who were forced to flee their homes temporarily due to Israeli bombardment.

Providing resiliency and mental health workshops to journalists in Ukraine

Journalists living through and reporting on active conflict can face acute mental health challenges. Last year, CPJ partnered with Hannah Storm, a specialist in journalism safety and mental health and the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine to provide resiliency and mental health workshops for Ukrainian journalists experiencing anxiety and stress due to their coverage of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, now about to enter its fourth year.

In 2024, CPJ helped to host three online mental health workshops attended by 160 Ukrainian journalists, who learned how to prevent burnout when working in a war zone, how to remain calm while reporting during air raids and explosions, and how to work effectively under shelling.

“Despite the challenging and uncertain times they are living through, participants shared their insights and experiences, enabling a real sense of solidarity which I hope can be sustained,” Storm, the trainer, told CPJ.

Distributing VPNs to journalists covering civil unrest in Venezuela and Senegal

Journalists covering civil unrest around the globe in 2024 had to contend with threats to their physical safety and obstructions to their work, including internet shutdowns in countries with repressive regimes.

After Senegal postponed the February 2024 election, prompting mass protests in which more than two dozen journalists were attacked, Senegalese authorities censored news and information by shutting down mobile internet. In response, CPJ partnered with virtual private network (VPN) provider TunnelBear to distribute VPNs to 27 journalists reporting in and on Senegal, which helped them to continue working in the event of future online blocking.

Across the world in Venezuela, CPJ provided 25 journalists with VPNs to continue their coverage after authorities repeatedly imposed digital shutdowns as protests erupted over President Nicolás Maduro’s widely disputed claim to have won the country’s July 28 presidential election. Ongoing suppression by the Venezuelan government had far-reaching consequences throughout the rest of 2024; CPJ supported three Venezuelan journalists with exile support and trained 30 Venezuelan journalists on their digital, physical, and psychological safety in partnership with local network Reporte Ya.

“The use of a VPN is an essential tool for practicing journalism in Venezuela,” a Venezuelan journalist who received a VPN from CPJ said. “This is especially important in an environment where surveillance and censorship are constant concerns. By encrypting the connection, a VPN allows you to research and communicate with confidential sources with greater confidence.”

Helping U.S. journalists safely cover the 2024 election

Elections and times of political transition pose special risks to journalists. In a year that saw around half the world’s population go to the polls, the 2024 U.S. presidential election was no exception. Ahead of the election, CPJ trained more than 740 journalists reporting on the U.S. on physical and digital safety, and provided U.S.-based journalists with resiliency and know-your-rights advice through a summer webinar series with partner organizations.

Jon Laurence, Supervising Executive Producer at AJ+, told CPJ that the training was “invaluable.” “Many of our staff members who were deployed to cover the conventions were able to attend the training and felt much better resourced as a result.”  

Reporters covered the November 5 election against a backdrop of retaliatory violence, legal threats, police attacks, and the specter of the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection. To make sure that journalists were as prepared as possible, CPJ reissued its legal rights guide for U.S.-based journalists, and distributed an updated election safety kit.

Providing grants to incarcerated journalists around the globe

Last year, CPJ provided a record 53 journalists with prison support in the form of a financial grant to help them access basic necessities behind bars, like food, water, and hygiene products. The grant can also be used by family members or lawyers to visit the journalist in prison, and to provide much-needed connection and emotional support. Recipients included journalists jailed in Myanmar, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Cameroon. For the first time, CPJ was also able to provide support to almost every imprisoned journalist in Belarus. Families of the 23 journalists helped by this grant were able to give care packages, consisting of items like stationery and medicine, to their loved ones. Some of the Belarusian journalists CPJ helped have since been released, and CPJ will keep fighting – and supporting – the hundreds who remain behind bars for their work.

For more information about CPJ’s journalist safety and emergency assistance work, visit CPJ’s Journalist Safety and Emergencies page. If you’re a journalist in need of assistance, please email emergencies@cpj.org.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Lucy Westcott.

Italy’s foreign minister has said the case was “complicated” and some reports suggested Sala was being held in retaliation for the detention of a Swiss-Iranian businessman and suspected arms dealer in Italy.

Sala, who works for the newspaper Il Foglio and the podcast company Chora Media, was in Iran on a journalist visa and was due to return to Italy on December 20. “Cecilia is a highly respected journalist and should not be used as a political pawn,” said festival co-founder and director Arianna Ciccone. “Iran has silenced her voice by putting her in jail and this is unacceptable.” 

Sala has spoken several times at the world-renowned festival, which is held annually in Perugia, Italy.

Press freedom groups, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said Sala’s arrest reflected a pattern of suppression of independent journalism in Iran and highlighted the willingness of Iran to target both foreign and domestic reporters as a means to stifle reporting critical of the regime.

“Iran has a long and ignominious history of jailing journalists – as well as of targeting reporters and their families at home and abroad,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “Cecilia Sala’s arrest is a powerful reminder of the daily threats faced by those reporting in and about Iran and she and all those wrongfully detained by Iran should be released immediately.”

Iran is one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists. Preliminary figures from the Committee to Protect Journalists showed there were 16 journalists in jail as of December 1, 2024, which would make the country the 7th biggest jailer of journalists worldwide.

“The detention of Cecilia Sala, without any reason having been officially communicated by the Iranian authorities, and despite the fact that the journalist had a valid visa, presents all the characteristics of arbitrary detention,” said RSF Director General Thibaut Bruttin. “We are also concerned about her conditions of detention as she is held in solitary confinement in Evin prison – infamous for being the cruel place where free voices critical of the regime are detained.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

“The additional eight months’ imprisonment given to journalist Ihar Karnei shows that the Belarusian authorities have little qualms about lashing out at members of the press already behind bars on spurious grounds,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Authorities should immediately release Karnei, along with all other jailed members of the press.”

Karnei, who formerly freelanced with Radio Svaboda, the Belarus service of the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was arrested in July 2023. State-owned newspaper Belarus Segodnya said that Karnei had collaborated with the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), which was the largest independent media association in Belarus until it was dissolved in 2021 and labeled an extremist group in 2023.

After Karnei’s three-year sentence was upheld in June, he was transferred to Prison No. 17 in the city of Shklow, in the central eastern part of the country, and placed almost immediately in a solitary cell. Karnei is deprived of phone calls and parcels, and his family receives one out of four letters he sends, his wife Inna told CPJ in November.

On November 28, 2024, banned human rights group  Viasna reported that Karnei was additionally charged with Article 411, Part 1, of the country’s criminal code, for allegedly disobeying the prison’s administration. There is no information about which of the prison’s requirements Karnei is accused of disobeying, according to the BAJ.

Belarus was the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 28 journalists behind bars on December 1, 2023, when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census.

CPJ emailed Prison No. 17 for comment but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“Scenes of journalists rushing to cover Syria’s post-Assad regime raise hope for the start of a new chapter for the country’s media workers,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “While we wait for the missing to return and the imprisoned to be released, we call on the new authorities to hold the perpetrators to account for the crimes of killing, abducting, or jailing reporters.”

CPJ is also urging Syria’s new leaders to allow journalists and media workers safe access to information and locations to cover events, without risking being detained or questioned for their work.

Syria has long been one of the world’s deadliest and riskiest areas for journalists, with CPJ documenting 141 journalists killed there between 2011 and 2024. This figure includes 23 murders and at least six deaths in government custody.

At least five journalists were imprisoned in Syria at the time of CPJ’s 2023 prison census. One of them, Tal al-Mallohi, a Syrian blogger detained since 2009, was released after the ousting of Assad and was reportedly with her family in Homs, according to media reports and the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression.

The fate of other prisoners, including U.S. journalist Austin Tice – abducted in Syria in mid-August 2012 – remains unknown. The U.S. special envoy for hostages, Roger Carstens, has traveled to Beirut to coordinate efforts to find Tice, senior U.S. officials told The Washington Post.

Syria has one of the world’s worst track records in punishing murderers of journalists, featuring prominently on CPJ’s Global Impunity Index for the last 11 years, including as the top offender in 2023. Journalists working there faced harsh conditions even before the start of the civil war, including censorship and retaliation for challenging the authorities.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Dong, 62, a columnist for the state-run newspaper Guangming Daily, was arrested in Beijing in February 2022 while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat, who was also briefly detained. Dong’s work has been published in the Chinese editions of The New York Times and the Financial Times, and he won a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 2006-2007.

“Interacting with diplomats is part of a journalist’s job. Jailing journalists on bogus and vicious charges like espionage is a travesty of justice,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “We condemn this unjust verdict and call on the Chinese authorities to protect the right of journalists to work freely and safely in China. Dong Yuyu must be reunited with his family.”

There was heavy police presence and journalists were asked to leave the court area in the capital Beijing where the sentence was handed down, according to Reuters.

China is the world’s leading jailer of journalists, which had 44 journalists behind bars as of December 1, 2023, according to CPJ’s most recent annual prison census.

China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emailed request for a comment on Dong’s sentencing.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The decision is a new blow to press freedom in Guatemala. Zamora, president of the now defunct elPeriódico newspaper, had already spent 813 days in jail and experienced years of government harassment after his reporting challenged the country’s political elite. 

Zamora was sentenced to six years imprisonment in June 2023 on money laundering charges, which were widely criticized as politically motivated. An appeals court overturned his conviction in October 2023; the retrial has been delayed by ongoing procedural hurdles.

CPJ has repeatedly urged the Guatemalan government, especially President Bernardo Arévalo, to end Zamora’s prosecution and the harassment of his family and the journalistic community. 

In an interview with CPJ before the overturning of his house arrest, Zamora discussed the personal toll of these charges, his unyielding commitment to press freedom, and the growing threats faced by journalists in Guatemala’s increasingly repressive environment.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is it like to return home after more than 800 days in prison?

Returning home has been an experience full of intense emotions and unexpected moments. When I arrived home, my friends who had supported me throughout the entire process came with me to my house — 10 people who, during my imprisonment, brought me food and visited me once a week. After spending the night with them, I only slept for a few hours. 

When I woke up, I found out that the directors of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), who were gathered in Córdoba, Argentina, wanted to speak with me. And from there, calls and interviews began, one after another.

Diplomats and media from all over the world want to speak with me, and when I go for my daily walk — about 10 kilometers [6.2 miles] a day — people stop to greet me, take photos, and offer their support. 

I appreciate the affection, but sometimes I feel overwhelmed. I wasn’t prepared for so much attention. I’m a shy person; I feel more comfortable writing than speaking in public, and this has been a big change. I also have health issues that I need to attend to, but I am here, trying to adapt.

I’m prepared, knowing they could come to take me back at any moment. And I’m ready here for when they come, to go back again. And I will come out again, and the time will come when they have to let me go free. 

How was your experience in the Mariscal Zavala prison, located at a military base in northern Guatemala City? 

Mariscal Zavala was a shock. They took me [in July 2022], with 18 armed men, and put me in a cell without any explanation.

I spent 14 days without sleep, with purple lights, and unable to communicate with my lawyers. During that time, they put insects in my cell that left wounds on my arms and legs. I also got poisoned by an insecticide that I managed to obtain to control the pests. Despite all this, my conditions improved when the new government changed: I was given better conditions, with light, heating, and more dignity.

The prosecutor’s office says it does not pursue you as a journalist but as a business owner. How do you respond to these statements?

For me, it is hard to conceive that José Rubén Zamora is not a journalist, as I have dedicated my entire life to this profession. They persecuted me and tried to imprison me just for doing my job. And when you add that they were seeking sentences for up to 20 years — the same maximum sentence given for crimes like money laundering or extortion — and they show as evidence my opinion columns, the argument that they are after me as a businessman loses all credibility.

Who is behind this, and why are they pursuing you?

What we’ve lived through in Guatemala has been a sinister metamorphosis of our democracy. Every four years, we elect a president who, rather than being a legitimate leader, is a thief, and he governs with the support of high-ranking military structures, organized crime, and monopolies. They’ve always been bothered by the fact that our newspaper did not align with their interests, that we were independent and denounced corruption and drug trafficking, which are part of that system.

Since 2007, a criminal structure has consolidated its power. It’s a web of interests that has taken over the country and is indifferent to the people’s problems. This is a power alliance that, although it has succeeded in persecuting me, has paid a high price. I think it would have been better for them if I had continued with my newspaper because, in the end, exposing their corruption was less damaging than my imprisonment.

​​This is not the first time you’ve found yourself in a dangerous situation because of your reporting. How has this affected you and your family?

My children never gave up. Despite the damage to their lives, they were always relentless. They worked tirelessly for my liberation and didn’t feel ashamed. The youngest one aimed to be an academic, was building a solid career and had to leave with her mother because they were after him. They even sent people to arrest him, but they were able to leave the country first. Now, he’s without a job, without documents, and his future is uncertain. It has been very tough for them and me, but they keep moving forward with strength.

In 2023, the Court of Appeals annulled your sentence on money laundering charges. What does this mean for you legally and personally?

I still don’t know the final impact. I have requested that we return to the hearing for the presentation of evidence, and I hope to present the testimonies of experts and the person who made the transaction with me. Additionally, I trust that the case regarding the travel receipts and the obstruction charge, which I consider ridiculous, will be dismissed at the intermediate hearing. The case has been intentionally delayed, but sooner or later, it will have to be resolved. If that happens, it will allow my wife to return.

What is the current status of the legal cases you are facing?

The trial that will be repeated is the most important, and I hope to present my evidence at that time. For this, the first hearing for the charges of money laundering and extortion is scheduled for September 25, 2025; there, they will set up a second hearing, likely in 2026. The case has no foundation, as the prosecutor’s office is setting up an extortion case, but they have no people to testify against either for that or for money laundering.

At one point, I was offered the possibility of going home if I accepted the charges and apologized to [former president Alejandro] Giammattei, his associate Miguel Martínez, and the press for my “immoralities.” When I refused, they began to create a second case to persecute my wife and my young son with charges of document falsification. The prosecutor’s office claims the signatures were fake, but those travel documents were legally issued by immigration.

Also, all of this happened in a unilateral hearing where I was not informed of the charges nor allowed to defend myself. This case has no evidence, but what the prosecutor’s office does is that every time there is a hearing, the judge is denounced, and the prosecutors do not show up, which leaves the case stalled.

What has the freezing of your accounts and seizure of all assets meant for you? How did the closure of the newspaper impact you?

It was devastating. Before the pandemic, I had no debts, but now I have obligations with the banks that I can’t even cover since my accounts have been frozen for two years. It’s a constant pressure.

Now elPeriódico is closed. How did you experience that process?

It was a solitary process. I witnessed the collapse of everything without being able to do anything. 

I came to believe that no matter who defended me — whether the best lawyer in the world or someone without experience — the result was going to be the same. That acceptance gave me a deep sense of serenity because I understood that I no longer had control over anything. It was a moment where I decided to just go with the flow, let myself be carried by the current, and I even thought that I might spend the rest of my life in prison. 

If it weren’t for organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), who not only helped me get out but also gave me solidarity and support I never expected, I don’t know how I would have been able to continue.

What impact do you think elPeriódico’s closure had on Guatemala and its press?

Guatemala lost one of its most belligerent and irreverent voices. Although the country still has several media outlets, our newspaper stood out for being against abuses of power, state terrorism, impunity, and corruption. We fought for democracy, freedom, and equality of opportunities. We were probably the most uncomfortable and bothersome media for the powerful. 

Despite being small, we knew that we caused significant moral damage to the country’s big thieves, which gave us great satisfaction.

How do you view the current press freedom situation in Guatemala, especially in relation to the journalists who investigate and publish the abuses of power under this government, compared to the previous one?

This president is an exception. He is a decent man, but he lacks control over Congress and the judicial system. The prosecutor’s office is also going after him, and I am sure they will try to remove his immunity to subject him to a legal process.

It’s encouraging to see that many journalists are still working and haven’t given up, even though they face constant risks. The fight for freedom is not philosophical; it is existential. It’s a daily conquest that is achieved by rejecting the abuses of the established power.

Looking ahead, do you see yourself continuing in journalism?

I would like to continue in journalism, but my lawyers have advised me to be cautious. They imprisoned me for two reasons: for traveling too much and because I can influence the media. That’s why, until at least the next two years pass, I must avoid speaking publicly, although it is very difficult for me to stay silent. 

Despite everything, I will always keep fighting. We must maintain our patience, courage, and faith without losing hope. It’s essential to develop the ability to overcome our fears and, whenever possible, break barriers. 

In the end, freedom is the fundamental pillar of democracy.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Dánae Vílchez.

Sebastien, who leads the #FreeJimmyLai campaign, last saw his father in August 2020 — weeks after Beijing imposed a national security law that led to a massive crackdown on pro-democracy advocates and journalists. Among them Lai, founder of the now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily.

After nearly four years in Hong Kong’s maximum-security Stanley Prison and multiple delays to his trial, the aging British citizen was due to take the stand for the first time on November 20 on charges of sedition and conspiring to collude with foreign forces, which he denies.

Lai, who has diabetes, routinely spends over 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, with only 50 minutes for restricted exercise and limited access to daylight, according to his international lawyers.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has found that Lai is unlawfully and arbitrarily detained and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called for his release.

Responding to CPJ’s request for comment, a Hong Kong government spokesperson referred to a November 17 statement in which it said that Lai was “receiving appropriate treatment and care in prison” and that Hong Kong authorities “strongly deplore any form of interference.”

In an interview with CPJ, Sebastien spoke about Britain’s bilateral ties with China, as well as Hong Kong — a former British colony where his father arrived as a stowaway on a fishing boat at age 12, before finding jobs in a garment factory and eventually launched a clothing retail chain and his media empire.

What do you anticipate when your father takes the stand for the first time?

To be honest, I do not know. My father is a strong person, but the Hong Kong government has spent four years trying to break him. I don’t think they can break his spirit but with his treatment they are in the process of breaking his body. We will see the extent of that on the stand.

Your father turned 77 recently. How is he doing in solitary confinement?

The last time I saw my father was in August of 2020. I haven’t been able to return to my hometown since and therefore have been unable to visit him in prison. His health has declined significantly. He is now 77, and, having spent nearly four years in a maximum-security prison in solitary confinement, his treatment is inhumane. For his dedication to freedom, they have taken his away.

For his bravery in standing in defense of others, they have denied him human contact. For his strong faith in God, they have denied him Holy Communion.

We have seen governments across the political spectrum call for Jimmy Lai’s release —the U.S., the European Parliament, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Ireland, among others. What does that mean to you?

We are incredibly grateful for all the support from multiple states in calling for my father’s release. The charges against my father are sham charges. The Hong Kong government has weaponized their legal system to crack down on all who criticize them.

You met with the U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently, who said Jimmy Lai’s case remains a priority and the government will press for consular access. What would you like to see Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government do?

They have publicly stated that they want to normalize relationships with China and to increase trade. I don’t see how that can be achieved if there is a British citizen in Hong Kong in the process of being killed for standing up for the values that underpin a free nation and the rights and dignity of its citizens.

Any normalization of the relationship with China needs to be conditional on my father’s immediate release and his return to the United Kingdom.

Your father’s life story in many ways embodies Hong Kong’s ‘never-give-up’ attitude. Do you think Hong Kong journalists and pro-democracy activists will keep on fighting? What is your message to Beijing and the Hong Kong government?

I think most of the world shares his spirit. Hong Kong is unique because it’s a city of refugees. It’s a city where we were given many of the freedoms of the free world. And as a result, it flourished. We knew what we had and what we escaped from.

My message is to release my father immediately. A Hong Kong that has 1,900 political prisoners for democracy campaigning, is a Hong Kong that has no rule of law, no free press, one that disregards the welfare of its citizens. This is not a Hong Kong that will flourish.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Beh Lih Yi.

“This show trial must end before it is too late,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg on Monday. “The case of Jimmy Lai is not an outlier, it’s a symptom of Hong Kong’s democratic decline. Hong Kong’s treatment of Jimmy Lai — and more broadly of independent media and journalists — shows that this administration is no longer interested in even a semblance of democratic norms.”

Lai, the founder of the now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, has spent nearly four years in a maximum-security prison and solitary confinement since December 2020. He has faced multiple postponements to his trial, in which he has been charged with sedition and conspiring to collude with foreign forces.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told parliament in October that the case of Lai, who is a British citizen, was a “priority” and called for his release. Similarly, United Nations experts in January urged Hong Kong authorities to drop all charges against the publisher and free him.

The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Lai is unlawfully and arbitrarily detained in Hong Kong, expressed alarm over his prolonged solitary confinement, and called for immediate remedy. Lai suffers from a long-standing health issue of diabetes.

Lai won a press freedom award from CPJ and the organization continues to advocate for his freedom.

Responding to CPJ’s request for comment, a Hong Kong government spokesperson referred to a November 17 statement in which it said that Lai was “receiving appropriate treatment and care in prison” and that Hong Kong authorities “strongly deplore any form of interference.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The appeal, submitted by Abdelfattah and his family, was supported by a letter from CPJ and other organizations on November 23. It called on the UNWGAD to review his case and issue a formal opinion on whether his detention is arbitrary and violates international law.

Abdelfattah was first arrested in September 2019 during a crackdown on protests demanding President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi’s resignation. He was later sentenced to five years in prison on charges of spreading false news and anti-state activities. Although Abdelfattah was scheduled for release in September 2024, Egyptian authorities unlawfully extended his detention until January 2027, in violation of Articles 482 and 484 of Egypt’s Criminal Procedure Law.

CPJ has previously called on the Egyptian government to release Abdelfattah, drop all remaining charges, and stop abusing legal provisions to unjustly prolong his imprisonment. Additionally, CPJ joined others in urging U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy to suspend all economic and financial partnerships with Egypt until the country frees Abdelfattah.

Read the full letter in English and العربية.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“Journalist Furkan Karabay is the latest in a long line of journalists who have ended up behind bars in Turkey simply for publishing critical reporting and commentary,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Karabay must not waste months of his life in prison, waiting to be indicted and tried. Turkey’s constant oppression of the free press is an obstacle to citizens’ rights to access information”.

Karabay, a reporter with the independent news site 10Haber, was detained on November 8 during a police raid in Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul.

The following evening, an Istanbul court transferred Karabay to prison pending trial on suspicion of “insulting a public servant,” “making targets of those who were tasked to combat terrorism,” and “knowingly distributing misleading information to the public,” according to news reports. 

A court document seen by Reuters said that the allegations against Karabay related to his social media posts on X, where he named the prosecutors investigating an opposition mayor — facts that Karabay told the court had been reported by a number of media outlets.

On October 31, Karabay reported on the arrest of mayor Ahmet Özer, of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), who prosecutors accused of having links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is banned as a terrorist organization in Turkey.

Journalists in Turkey who report on the judiciary are frequently charged with “making targets of those who were tasked to combat terrorism.”

On December 28, 2023, Karabay was arrested on the suspicion of “making targets of those who were tasked to combat terrorism” after reporting on a bribery trial. He was released pending trial on January 8, 2024.

CPJ’s emails requesting comment from the ministry of justice and the chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“With at least 15 journalists awaiting trial on charges that could see them jailed for between eight and 20 years, Azerbaijan’s treatment of the press is absolutely incompatible with the human rights values expected of a United Nations host country,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “CPJ calls on Azerbaijani authorities to release all unjustly jailed journalists and support press freedom, and for the United Nations to ensure that major events are not held in countries with dire human rights and press freedom records like Azerbaijan”.

On November 6, CPJ and 16 other international human rights organizations called on the European Union to raise directly with the government of Azerbaijan the deteriorating human rights situation in the country.

Over the last year, Azerbaijani authorities have charged at least 15 journalists with major criminal offenses in retaliation for their work, 13 of whom are being held in pretrial detention. Most of those behind bars work for Azerbaijan’s last remaining independent media outlets and face currency smuggling charges related to the alleged receipt of Western donor funds.

Azerbaijan’s relations with the West have deteriorated since 2023 when it seized Nagorno-Karabakh, leading to the flight of the region’s 100,000 ethnic Armenians. In February, President Ilham Aliyev won a fifth consecutive term and in September his party won a parliamentary majority in elections that observers criticized as restrictive.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The statement highlights how, in the months leading up to the COP29 conference, Azerbaijani authorities have pursued a “relentless crackdown” against independent media and civil society, “eradicating most forms of dissent and legitimate human rights work.”

At least 15 Azerbaijani journalists have been arrested since November 2023 and currently await trial on charges that could see them jailed for between eight and 20 years. Thirteen of them remain in pre-trial detention.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Egyptian authorities have refused to release Abd el-Fattah until January 2027, in violation of articles 482 and 484 of the country’s Criminal Procedure Law.

Abd el-Fattah was first arrested in September 2019, amidst a crackdown on protests calling for President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi’s resignation, and was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of anti-state and false news. In September 2024, CPJ separately called on the Egyptian government to release Abd el-Fattah, drop all remaining charges, and cease manipulating legal statutes to unjustly detain him.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Bouachrine, Raissouni, and Radi became global icons of the fight for press freedom in Morocco after they were arrested in separate cases between 2018 and 2020 and sentenced to 15, five, and six years respectively on sexual assault and other charges. Media freedom advocates and local journalists told CPJ that the “morals” charges were intended to dampen public support for the three journalists, known for their critical reporting on the government.

Though the journalists are free, they still face the burden of these convictions, a state of affairs exacerbated by authorities’ lack of communication about the terms of their pardon. Bouachrine, Radi, and Raissouni don’t know if their sentences were commuted, or if they were fully exonerated, a meaningful distinction in terms of their ability to go back to work.  

“In Morocco, in order for journalists to receive a press accreditation to legally work, they need not to have a criminal record. So, at the moment I cannot work in journalism until I figure out my unclear legal status,” Radi told CPJ.

If Bouachrine has a criminal record, it may impede him from trying to reopen Akhbar al-Youm newspaper, where he served as editor-in-chief until he was arrested in 2018, when Raissouni took over until he too was arrested in 2020. Akhbar al-Youm’s parent company, Media 21, was barred from accessing government funding, and the newspaper, one of the only independent outlets in the country, closed in 2021.

CPJ’s emailed Morocco’s Ministry of Justice about the terms of the journalists’ pardons and the Ministry of Interior for comment on the harassment facing the journalists, did not receive any responses.

Harassment in pro-government media

Compounding the journalists’ insecurity is intense harassment, much of it directed by pro-government media, in which the royal family and powerful businesspeople hold stakes. Media companies including Barlamane.com, Chouf TV, and Maroc Medias, published articles about the accusations against Bouachrine, Radi, and Raissouni while ignoring evidence proving their innocence, which the journalists said played a central role in their convictions. Now that the three are out, the smears have started again.

Weeks after the journalists’ release, pro-government news website Al-Jarida 24 called them “fake heroes” and slammed a human rights group that hosted them for press conference as “glorifying individuals with a dark past of sexual assault and human trafficking.”

Aida Alami, a Moroccan journalist and a visiting professor at Columbia University School of Journalism, said the negative coverage fits a pattern. “Such attacks are common in Morocco and are meant to never lift the pressure off released journalists, even after they are freed,” she said.

She pointed to the case of journalist Hajar Raissouni, Raissouni’s niece, who was smeared in pro-government news site Barlamane.com after she received a royal pardon for a 2019 conviction of having sex outside of marriage and seeking an illegal abortion. 

More recently, Barlamane.com went after her uncle Raissouni for giving an interview to Spanish outlet El Independiente in September describing the royal pardon as “a correction to the crimes committed by the intelligence services against us and our families with a lack of ethics never seen before in Morocco.” An unsigned article in Barlamane.com slammed Raissouni for his decision to speak to El Independiente, claiming without evidence that the Spanish outlet receives funding from Algerian intelligence. (Morocco and Algeria severed ties in 2021.) Raissouni, said Barlamane.com, has “renewed his loyalty to enemies of the state.”

In a phone call with CPJ, Raissouni defended the interview. “The only reason I spoke to El Independiente in the first place is because [authorities] will never allowme to speak in the local media outlets about how I am, and always have been, innocent and how I am being targeted in this country regardless of being pardoned.”

He called the negative coverage “beyond a defamation campaign,” saying that Barlamane.com wants him back in prison. In a recent article it called his mouth a “criminal environment” requiring “legal examination.” Before his last legal ordeal, the outlet was part of a drumbeat of coverage leading up to his arrest by urging an investigation against him.

Threatening phone calls

Radi, meanwhile, has been spared the smear campaigns that targeted Bouachrine and Raissouni, but he faces another form of insidious harassment, he told CPJ.

“In the first three days of our release, some individuals were following me every time I walk in the streets. But after we [Radi, Raissouni, and Bouachrine] held two press conferences about our release, I stopped being followed but started getting phone calls threatening to arrest me again if I don’t shut up,” he said.

This wasn’t the first time Radi was surveilled; Amnesty International said that in 2019 and 2020 Radi’s phone was infected with Pegasus, an Israeli-made spyware. In 2022, the Pegasus Project, a collaborative investigation, found that Raissouni and Bouachrine were also selected for surveillance.

Raissouni believes that the Moroccan government has effectively erased independent journalism in the kingdom, using what he calls “sewage journalism” — the pro-government media — to intimidate independent outlets and journalists. Even the few independent outlets that remain have resorted to self-censorship, he said.  

“Today, it is impossible to go back to work in journalism in Morocco. There are no remaining outlets today that would allow their journalists to write anything that is not aligned with the state narrative. ‘Sewage journalism’ has become one of the most famous forms of journalism in the kingdom, when it is supposed to be true independent journalism,” said Raissouni.

Even if Radi is able to go back to work, he’s not sure what kind of opportunities await him. “There is no free media anymore. There is simply nowhere to write your opinion anymore.”  

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Middle East and North Africa Staff.

The statement highlights a “deeply troubling trend” of criminalizing and intimidating human rights defenders, including Judge Rodolfo Traheta Córdova, who has been threatened ahead of Friday’s hearing.

Zamora, 67, founder of the now defunct elPeriódico newspaper, was arrested more than 800 days ago and has been waiting for a retrial after his conviction on money laundering charges was overturned in October 2023. Legal experts have said that Zamora’s rights to a fair trial have been violated in what is widely seen as a politically motivated case of arbitrary detention.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“The sentencing of Robert Telles marks a significant milestone in the quest for justice. Although the jailing of Telles cannot undo Jeff German’s murder, it can act as an important deterrent to would-be assailants of journalists,” said CPJ U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “German’s murder by a county politician is a stark reminder of the dangers that journalists – especially local reporters worldwide – face simply for doing their jobs and reporting on matters of public interest.”

German, a veteran reporter who covered organized crime and local politics, was stabbed to death on September 2, 2022, outside his home in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Telles, a former Clark County public administrator, lost a re-election bid in June 2022 after German reported on alleged mismanagement in Telles’ office.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“By sentencing two anti-corruption journalists to lengthy prison terms on retaliatory charges, Kyrgyzstan has forfeited its reputation as a relative haven of press freedom in Central Asia and entered a dark new page in its history,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Kyrgyz authorities should not contest the appeals of Makhabat Tajibek kyzy and Azamat Ishenbekov and lift all restrictions on other Temirov Live journalists. International partners must press the Kyrgyz government to reverse its growing attacks on the press.”

The other verdicts in the Temirov Live trial were:

• Aike Beishekeyeva and Aktilek Kaparov: sentenced to three years’ probation.
• Sapar Akunbekov, Saipidin Sultanaliev, Tynystan Asypbekov, Maksat Tajibek uulu, Joodar Buzumov, Jumabek Turdaliev, and Akyl Orozbekov: not guilty.

Kyrgyz police arrested the 11 current and former staff of Temirov Live, a local partner of the global Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), in January. By April, all but the four convicted on October 10 had been released into house arrest or under travel bans.

The indictment, reviewed by CPJ, alleges that Temirov Live and its sister project Ait Ait Dese “indirectly” called for mass unrest by “discrediting” authorities in their videos.

The journalists’ lawyers said the case was built on “untenable” testimony from state-appointed expert linguists and political scientists who analyzed the outlet’s videos.

Temirov Live’s founder Bolot Temirov, who has been deported and banned from Kyrgyzstan, has said the charges may be in retaliation for the outlet’s investigations into alleged corruption, including by President Sadyr Japarov. Japarov said last month that the Temirov Live journalists were “paid to sit on social media and spread false information calling for mass unrest.” Since Japarov came to power in 2020, Kyrgyz authorities have launched an unprecedented crackdown on independent reporting

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The privately owned station fell foul of Cameroon’s regulatory National Communication Council (NCC), which judged it to have harmed the reputations of two ministers in the government of 91-year-old President Paul Biya, who has ruled the Central African country since 1982. The show and its presenter Duval Fangwa were suspended for one month. When Équinoxe TV broadcast a replacement Sunday show, “Le Débat 237,” the NCC swiftly banned that too.

Despite the return of Droit de Réponse, the station’s difficulties are far from over.

Two Équinoxe TV political journalists told CPJ that they had received death threats by phone and been threatened with arrest in connection with their work.

“Every day, when I leave my house, I know that the worst can happen,” said one, who does not feel safe despite relocating. The other journalist has been in hiding since early August. Both declined to be named, citing safety concerns.

Attacks on the press have escalated as Cameroon prepares for elections in 2025 that could see Biya — one of the world’s longest serving presidents — win another seven-year term. Tensions have been exacerbated by the delay of parliamentary and local elections until 2026, which Biya’s opponents fear will strengthen his hand in the presidential vote.

“The reduction of freedom of expression and the media has begun. Journalists are censoring themselves under the instructions of their bosses or editors,” Marion Obam, president of the National Union of Journalists of Cameroon, told CPJ.

Obam condemned as an “attempt to muzzle the press” a July 16 local government order banning from Mfoundi department, which includes the capital Yaoundé, anyone who “dangerously insults” government institutions or officials or takes action that could “lead to serious disturbances to public order.” Emmanuel Mariel Djikdent, prefect of Mfoundi department, said he was concerned about “the statements of certain guests on television or in radio studios.”

Djikdent was swiftly backed up by communication minister René Sadi, who condemned an “upsurge in the use of abusive language” against state institutions and called for “restraint.”

CPJ has since documented the following:

• August 8
  The NCC suspended the privately owned newspaper Première Heure, its reporter Alain Balomlog, and publishing director Jeremy Baloko for one month for failing to “cross-check and balance” allegations of mismanagement by regional agriculture delegate Jean Claude Konde.

• August 13
  Police sealed the doors of RIS Radio following the NCC’s August 8 order to suspend broadcasting and to stop station manager Sismondi Barlev Bidjocka practicing journalism, both for a period of six months. The NCC said that Bidjocka aired “unfounded and offensive statements” about the powerful Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, Secretary General of the Presidency, on July 22.

• August 22
  La Voix du Centre editor Emmanuel Ekouli was beaten by three men on a motorcycle in Yaoundé who stole his laptop, phone, and recording equipment. He was similarly attacked by three men on a motorcycle on July 9. Ekouli has received threats over his journalism and work with the press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders investigating the 2023 murder of journalist Martinez Zogo, according to five screenshots reviewed by CPJ. La Voix du Centre reporter Guy Modeste Dzudie told CPJ that he and Ekouli had also received threatening calls and messages over a June report on corruption in an inheritance case.

• August 28
  Amadou Vamoulké, former managing director of the state-owned Cameroon Radio and Television, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for embezzlement. The 73-year-old has been jailed since 2016 and was given a 12-year sentence in 2022 on a separate embezzlement charge. CPJ believes his imprisonment is in reprisal for his journalistic independence in the face of government directives.

• September 4
  Police arrested Le Zénith reporter Stéphane Nguema Zambo while he was attending an appointment related to his investigation into embezzlement in the Ministry of Secondary Education, Le Zénith’s publishing director Zacharie Flash Ndiomo told CPJ. Zambo was threatened and coerced into publishing a Facebook post recanting his findings before being released on September 6, Ndiomo said.

“We are going through a difficult period,” said François Mboke, president of the Network of Press Owners of Cameroon (REPAC). “There are risks for those who want to remain professional.”

NCC spokesman Denis Mbezele told CPJ that the regulator’s sanctions were to remind the media to act responsibly.

Police spokesperson Joyce Cécile Ndjem declined to respond unless CPJ came to her office in Yaoundé.

CPJ’s calls to request comment from the office of the Presidency, the Ministry of Communication, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Secondary Education, and Mfoundi Prefecture were not answered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The statement also urged Egypt’s international partners to raise Abdelfattah’s case with their counterparts and press for his immediate release.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah was arrested in September 2019 amid a government crackdown on protests demanding that President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi resign. Abdelfattah had posted about the protests and arrests on Facebook. In December 2021, he was sentenced to five years in prison on anti-state and false news charges.

On Tuesday, CPJ separately called on the Egyptian government to release Alaa, drop all remaining charges against him, and stop manipulating legal statutes to unjustly imprison him.

Read the full statement in English and العربية.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The letter included the case of Abduljalil Alsingace, an award-winning Bahraini academic, blogger, and human rights defender who has been arbitrarily detained since 2011. He began a hunger strike on July 8, 2021, after prison authorities confiscated his manuscript on Bahraini dialects of Arabic, which he spent four years researching and writing. Alsingace, who has a disability, has reportedly been tortured during his detention.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“After serving his five-year sentence, Egyptian-British blogger Alaa Abdelfattah must be released immediately, and all remaining charges against him must be dropped. He deserves to be reunited with his son and family,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim MENA program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “The Egyptian authorities must uphold their own laws and stop manipulating legal statutes to unjustly imprison Abdelfattah. It is a profound disgrace for Egypt to silence such a vital voice of conscience behind bars.”

Abdelfattah’s family and his campaign for release wrote on social media platform X, “We hope that the law will be respected and Alaa will be freed and reunited with his son, Khaled.”

However, Abdelfattah’s lawyer, Khaled Ali, told the independent media outlet Al-Manassa that Abdelfattah is “being subjected to abuse, oppression, and manipulation of legal texts.” Ali said prosecutors calculated the start of the sentence from the date it was ratified on January 3, 2022 — not from the date of his arrest — which means Abdelfattah’s release date is now set for January 2027.

Egyptian authorities’ failure to release Abdelfattah by September 29 would be in violation of articles 482 and 484 of the country’s Criminal Procedure Law.

In April 2024, CPJ and 26 other press freedom and human rights organizations sent a letter to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) urging the UNWGAD to determine whether Abdelfattah’s detention is arbitrary and violates international law.

The 2019 arrest, which took place about six months after Abdelfattah was released after serving a previous five-year sentence, occurred amid a government crackdown on protests demanding that President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi resign. Abdelfattah had posted about the protests and arrests on Facebook and wrote about politics and human rights violations for numerous outlets, including the independent Al-Shorouk newspaper and the progressive Mada Masr news website.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

New York, September 23, 2024 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today announced the Climate Crisis Journalist Protection Initiative, which will ensure that journalists reporting on climate issues are able to do so freely and safely. The initiative will provide climate journalists with assistance, safety training, and other forms of support.

CPJ has raised nearly one-third of the funds needed for the $1 million dollar initiative, which CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg unveiled today at the 2024 Clinton Global Initiative meeting. The annual meeting is a venue for civil society groups to publicly commit to action on global problems. 

“Journalists probe political corruption and the organized crime networks exploiting natural resources. They report on environmental devastation and the innovations and policies to stop it,” said Ginsberg at the meeting. “Such reporting is becoming increasingly dangerous. Climate change is the issue of our time and one that requires journalists to be able to report freely and safely. This initiative will help ensure that.”

The Climate Crisis Journalist Protection Initiative will: 

• Provide financial and non-financial support, including mental health assistance and tailored safety workshops, to journalists via a dedicated emergency fund 
• Further CPJ’s research to detect global hotspots and safety trends, map journalist needs, and conduct preventative outreach
• Help increase awareness of the threats facing climate reporters and transform existing journalist protection mechanisms to account for climate-related threats
• Engage with the private sector to ensure that journalists face no barriers to and no reprisal for their reporting on companies that are exacerbating or working to solve the climate crisis

Between 2009 and 2023, at least 749 journalists and news media outlets reporting on environmental issues were targeted with murder, physical violence, arrest, online harassment, or legal attacks, according to UNESCO. More than 300 of these attacks occurred between 2019 and 2023 – a 42% increase on the preceding five years (2014-2018).

CPJ has long documented climate-related attacks on journalists and has published safety advice on covering extreme weather events, flash floods, and wildfires. In 2001, CPJ established its journalist assistance program to dispense emergency grants to journalists in distress worldwide. In 2023 CPJ provided assistance to 719 journalists from 59 countries. 

CPJ’s Climate Crisis Journalist Protection Initiative was unveiled during the 2024 annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York on September 23, during a session on solutions for journalists covering crises, featuring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among others.

About the Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. We defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.

Media Contact: press@cpj.org 

About the Clinton Global Initiative 

Founded by President Bill Clinton in 2005, the Clinton Global Initiative is a community of doers representing a broad cross-section of society and dedicated to the idea that we can accomplish more together than we can apart.  

Through CGI’s unique model, more than 9,000 organizations have launched more than 3,900 Commitments to Action — new, specific, and measurable projects and programs. Learn more about the Clinton Global Initiative and how you can get involved at www.ClintonGlobal.org

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

They offered to release Guaita if her mother, Xiomara Barreto, who worked on the opposition campaign to defeat President Nicolás Maduro, turned herself in. Barreto, who is in hiding, rejected the proposal.

“My daughter is being held hostage,” Barreto said in an August 25 voice recording posted on social media five days after her daughter’s arrest. Then, addressing authorities holding Guaita, she said: “You are doing great damage to an innocent person just because you were unable to arrest me.”

Such extortion schemes are part of what press watchdog groups describe as an unprecedented government crackdown on the Venezuelan media following the election that Maduro claims to have won despite strong evidence that he lost to opposition candidate Edmundo González.

Besides Guaita, his regime has jailed at least five other journalists – Paúl León, Yousner Alvarado, Deysi Peña, Eleángel Navas, and Gilberto Reina. (Another, Carmela Longo, has been released but faces criminal charges and has been barred from leaving the country.)

These journalists are among more than 2,000 anti-government protesters and opposition activists who have been detained following the July 28 balloting, a wave or repression that prompted González, who may have beaten Maduro by a 2-to-1 margin according to opposition tallies, to flee to Spain where he has been granted political asylum.

‘This government has gone crazy’

Venezuela has now reached a decades-long high of journalists it has imprisoned, according to Marianela Balbi, director of the Caracas-based Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, and CPJ’s own data from prior years.

Like Guaita, several were arrested while covering anti-government protests. They face charges of terrorism, instigating violence, and hate crimes. If convicted, Balbi said, they could face up to 30 years in prison each, yet they have no access to private lawyers and have instead been assigned public defenders loyal to the Maduro regime.

Carlos Correa, director of the Caracas free press group Espacio Público, said security agents don’t even bother to secure arrest warrants and have, in some cases, demanded bribes of up to US$4,000 not to detain journalists. In addition, at least 14 journalists have had their passports canceled with no explanation, according to Balbi.

“This government has gone crazy,” Correa told CPJ. “The most hardline elements are now in control and they are angry about being rejected at the polls.”

Among the hardliners is Diosdado Cabello, the number two figure in the ruling United Socialist Party who last month was appointed interior minister. Cabello, who is now in charge of police forces, is a frequent press basher whose defamation lawsuit against the Caracas daily El Nacional prompted the Maduro regime to seize the newspaper’s building as damages in 2021.

Cabello also uses his weekly program on state TV to insult and stigmatize journalists. On the September 5 episode, for example, Cabello accused the online news outlets Efecto Cocuyo, El Pitazo, Armando.Info, Tal Cual, and El Estimulo, of trying to destabilize Venezuela and, without evidence, claimed they were financed by drug traffickers.

All this has created “a lot of fear and frustration,” Balbi said. “This is what happens in countries with no rule of law.”

Journalists flee amid sharp drop in press freedom

To be sure, Venezuela’s press freedom erosion predated the election, as the Maduro government has closed TV and radio stations, blocked news websites, confiscated newspapers, and fomented fear and self-censorship over its 11 years in power. But since the vote, the situation has deteriorated precipitously with the government imposing internet shutdowns and blocking communication platforms, while individual journalists face impossible choices to continue their work.

Several reporters have fled the country. One journalist, who had been covering anti-government protests in the western state of Trujillo, was tipped off last month by a government security agent that her name was on an arrest list. She hid with friends and then, after learning that police were staking out her home, made her way to neighboring Colombia.

“There is so much dread,” said the journalist who, like several sources for this story, spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity. Government officials “don’t care that you are innocent. Never before have I felt so fragile and vulnerable.”

Those who remain in Venezuela are exercising extreme caution. They are self-censoring, staying off-camera in video reports, leaving their bylines off digital stories, and avoiding opposition rallies. Some radio news programs have gone off the air or have switched to musical formats.

A journalist in western Falcón state told CPJ that security agents are tracking the articles and social media posts of individual journalists and said they have filmed her while covering opposition rallies.

“They make you feel like a criminal or a fugitive from justice,” said the reporter who is considering leaving journalism and fleeing Venezuela.

A veteran reporter in Carabobo state, just west of Caracas, told CPJ that she has worked for years to make a name for herself as a fair and balanced journalist but is now being told by her editors to remove her byline from her stories for her own protection.

Meanwhile, it’s become more difficult for reporters to interview trusted sources and average Venezuelans because, even when they are promised anonymity, they fear government reprisals, a journalist based in western Zulia state told CPJ.

CPJ called Maduro’s press office and the Interior Ministry for comment but there was no answer.

Outlets band together and use AI to shield individual reporters

To protect themselves, many journalists are staying off social media and are erasing photos, text messages, and contacts from their mobile phones in case they are arrested and the devices are confiscated. Some have gone to opposition marches posing as members of the crowd rather than taking out their notebooks and recording gear and identifying as journalists. On such outings, some are required to check in with their editors every 20 minutes to make sure they are safe.

“We are trying to report the news while also protecting our people,” said César Batiz, the editor of El Pitazo, who fled the country several years ago and works from exile in Florida. “We realize that no story is more important that our journalists’ safety.”

Since the election, El Pitazo is jointly publishing stories with several other media outlets in an effort to make it harder for the regime to target any individual news organization. For added protection, many of these same news sites are taking part in Operación Retuit, or Operation Retweet, in which their journalists put together stories that are narrated on video by newsreaders created by artificial intelligence.

“So, for security reasons, we will use AI to provide information from a dozen independent Venezuelan news organizations,” says one of the avatars, who appears as a smiling young man in a plaid shirt in the initial Operación Retuit video posted on X on August 13.

Thanks to all of these efforts important stories are still being published, including reports on regime killings of protesters, the imprisonment of minors arrested at anti-government demonstrations, and electoral observers describing government fraud during the July 28 balloting.

Or, in the words of Batiz: “The regime is cracking down so we have to be more creative.”

Still, Correa, of Espacio Público, says the repression is taking its toll. “Without a doubt there are fewer journalists covering important stories in Venezuela, and much more caution and fear.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by John Otis.

Bekirov, who is an ethnic Crimean Tatar from Ukraine’s Russian-occupied region of Crimea, was a correspondent for independent Russian news website Grani and reported on Russian authorities’ raids and trials of Crimean Tatars for Crimean Solidarity’s YouTube channel before he was sentenced to 19 years in prison in March 2022.

“The harsh treatment of Remzi Bekirov in prison is indicative of the plight of jailed Crimean Tatar journalists whom Russian authorities punish with lengthy prison terms on fabricated terrorism charges in retaliation for their reporting on human rights abuses in the occupied Crimea,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Russian authorities must immediately release Remzi Bekirov and all other jailed Ukrainian journalists and ensure their safe return to their homeland.”

Bekirov is imprisoned at a penal colony in Russia’s southern Siberia region of Khakassia on charges of organizing the activities of a terrorist organization and “preparing for a violent seizure of power,” according to his lawyer, Emil Kurbedinov, who spoke to CPJ, and Crimean Solidarity, a human rights organization that reports on politically motivated cases. The IK-33 colony is located in the region’s capital, Abakan, more than 4,000 km from his home in Ukraine’s Crimea.

Bekirov “receives heightened scrutiny,” including strict monitoring of his correspondence, regular cell searches, and being placed in solitary confinement five times since his transfer to IK-33 in August 2024, Kurbedinov told CPJ, adding that Bekirov was in solitary as of September 13.

CPJ’s email to the press office of Russia’s Federal Service for the Execution of Punishments requesting verification and details about Bekirov’s treatment did not receive a response. CPJ’s call to the Crimean branch of the Russian Ministry of Interior did not go through.

Kurbedinov said Bekirov appeared particularly frightened during their recent meeting, which a prison administrator monitored. Kurbedinov said Bekirov’s detention far from Crimea is harmful and “intentional,” making visits from family and attorneys difficult.

Since Russian authorities cracked down on independent media in Crimea after annexing the peninsula in 2014, many have engaged in “citizen journalism,” particularly focused on human rights issues affecting Crimean Tatars.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Supporters of Leonard Peltier are calling on President Biden to grant clemency to the Indigenous leader and activist, who marked his 80th birthday behind bars on Thursday after nearly a half-century in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. The ailing Peltier, who uses a walker and has serious health conditions, including diabetes, has always maintained his innocence over the 1975 killing of two FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation. His conviction was riddled with irregularities and prosecutorial misconduct, and he is considered to be the longest-serving political prisoner in the United States. For much of the last four years, Peltier has been held under near-total lockdown. For more on Peltier and the campaign to free him, we speak with Nick Tilsen, president of the NDN Collective, and two attorneys on Peltier’s legal defense team, Jenipher Jones and Moira Meltzer-Cohen.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The posts dealt with an investigation into an alleged corruption scheme involving the businessman, a company, and Caruaru City Hall in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, in the organization of events.

“Criminal justice is not the appropriate response to dealing with slander, defamation and libel. These should be addressed solely through civil lawsuits, to enable the balancing of rights and preserving freedom of expression and of the press,” the statement said.

Read the full statement in English here.

Read the full statement in Portuguese here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

By weaponizing the legal system against journalists, China has ruthlessly reneged on guarantees given to Hong Kong, which should enjoy a high degree of autonomy after the former British colony was handed back to Beijing in 1997, the groups said in a joint statement.

Former Stand News editors Patrick Lam and Chung Pui-kuen are due to be sentenced on September 26 and could be jailed for two years.

“We now await with trepidation the outcome of trials targeting senior staff from the defunct Apple Daily newspaper, especially its founder Jimmy Lai who faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars,” they added.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“The sentencing of journalist Sergey Mikhaylov to eight years in prison on what Russian authorities label as ‘fake news’ is another sign of the Kremlin’s fear of journalists telling the truth about the 2022 civilian massacre in Russian-occupied Bucha,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s program coordinator for Europe and Central Asia. “Russian authorities should not contest Mikhaylov’s appeal and stop their prosecution of independent journalists.”  

A city court in Gorno-Altaysk, the capital of the Siberian republic of Altai, found Mikhaylov, a publisher of independent Siberian newspaper Listok detained since April 2022, guilty of disseminating “knowingly false information” about the Russian army “under the guise of reliable information” over the information distributed through Listok’s Telegram channel and website about the killing of civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities.

The court also banned Mikhaylov from working as a journalist and administering websites for four years after his release.

Mikhaylov, who plans to appeal, denied the charges and told the court that he wanted “to reveal the truth” about the Russian-Ukrainian war, protect Russians from state propaganda, and reduce the number of war casualties.

Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor blocked Listok’s website in February 2022, and law enforcement raided the outlet’s editorial office and several employees’ homes on the day of Mikhaylov’s arrest.

Mikhaylov was one of the first journalists detained under the March 2022 law against publishing “fake news” about the army following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Russia is the world’s fourth-worst jailer of journalists, with CPJ’s most recent prison census documenting at least 22 journalists, including Mikhaylov, in prison on December 1, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“The guilty verdict is another nail in the coffin for Hong Kong’s press freedom,” said Iris Hsu, CPJ’s China representative. “It shows the government’s determination to destroy independent journalism in the city. Hong Kong authorities must stop persecuting the media for their critical reporting.”

The editors of the now defunct independent news site, who are out on bail, are due to be sentenced on September 26 and could be jailed for two years.

In 2021, hundreds of police raided Stand News’ offices and arrested Lam, Chung, and four others affiliated with the outlet. The delivery of the verdict in Lam and Chung’s trial was postponed multiple times since it concluded in June 2023.

Hong Kong Police Force and Chief Executive John Lee’s office did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emailed requests for comment.  

China was the world’s worst jailer of journalists, with 44 behind bars, in CPJ’s 2023 prison census. Those held include CPJ’s 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award winner Jimmy Lai, founder of the shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, who has been behind bars since 2020 and is facing life imprisonment if convicted of conspiring to collude with foreign forces.  

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

A military court inside Myeik Prison sentenced the Dawei Watch journalists Aung San Oo on February 16 and Myo Myint Oo on May 15, the chief editor of the local independent outlet told CPJ, requesting anonymity due to fear of reprisals. The reporters were arrested in the coastal town of Myeik in December, three days after returning home from hiding.

“Dawei Watch journalists Aung San Oo and Myo Myint Oo’s lengthy sentences on terrorism-related charges are senselessly harsh and must be reversed,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “These types of extreme court rulings aim to instill fear among all reporters and will have a chilling effect across Myanmar’s independent media.”

The sentences, to be served at Myeik Prison, were not made public until recently, the editor said.

Authorities beat Aung San Oo and Myo Myint Oo during interrogations at a detention center and denied them legal counsel, according to a Dawei Watch statement.

Four other Dawei Watch staff have been arrested since the military seized power in 2021, including reporter Aung Lwin who was sentenced in 2022 to five years in prison on terrorism charges.

Myanmar’s Ministry of Information did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment. Myanmar was the world’s second-worst jailer of journalists, with 43 behind bars in CPJ’s 2023 prison census.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.