One year after protest crackdown, Iran’s press in turmoil

A Tehran newspaper features a photograph of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, whose death sparked a national uprising, as pictured on September 18, 2022. (West Asia News Agency via Reuters/Majid Asgaripour)

When Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, died in morality police custody last September, Iran’s already embattled press corps paid a heavy price for reporting on her death and the nationwide protests that followed. Scores of journalists were among those arrested as Iranian authorities cracked down on the demonstrators, leading Iran to be ranked as the world’s worst jailer of journalists in CPJ’s 2022 prison census.

One year later, the assault on the press – as well as on activists and Amini’s relatives – continues. Journalists and even their lawyers have faced punitive retaliation for their work, with a number of reporters making the hard decision to flee their country.

In two new features, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa team identifies the key trends in the ongoing crackdown and speaks to exiled journalist Saeede Fathi, who was imprisoned for two months in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison.

Galina Timchenko targeted by Pegasus spyware

Galina Timchenko, head of the independent Russian news website Meduza (Reuters/Ints Kalnins)

The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply disturbed by the findings of an investigation that the phone of exiled Russian journalist Galina Timchenko was infected by Pegasus surveillance spyware while she was in Germany earlier this year.

“Journalists and their sources are not free and safe if they are spied on,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “This attack on Timchenko underscores that governments must implement an immediate moratorium on the development, sale, and use of spyware technologies. The threat is simply too large to ignore.”

Timchenko’s phone was infected by Pegasus, a spyware produced by the Israeli company NSO Group, according to a Meduza report and a joint-investigation by rights groups Access Now and research organization Citizen Lab. The infection took place shortly after Russia’s Prosecutor General designated Meduza as an “undesirable” organization – a measure that banned the outlet from operating on Russian territory.

Read CPJ’s report on spyware’s threat to press freedom and the organization’s call for export controls on the technology.

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Journalists Attacked

Samuel Wazizi

KILLED

Cameroonian news anchor and camera operator Samuel Wazizi died in government custody on August 17, 2019.

Police officers arrested him on August 2, saying they were looking for Wazizi to “get a certain information for their boss, the commissioner.”

On August 7, he was transferred to military custody and disappeared. In June 2020, military authorities disclosed that Wazizi had died of “severe sepsis” 10 days after that transfer.

CPJ has repeatedly called for authorities to allow an independent probe into Wazizi’s death.

Learn more about Wazizi