2018

Journalists arrested On May 3, authorities in the southern city of Mersin transferred İsmail Çoban, former news editor for the shuttered Kurdish language daily Azadiya Welat, to the southeastern city of Diyarbakır, where he will remain in custody pending trial, according to reports.

Nairobi, May 10, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the Gambian Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to declare criminal defamation unconstitutional, but is dismayed that segments of the country’s criminal code on sedition and false news were upheld.

CPJ, along with 64 other non-governmental organizations, today wrote to Tanzanian President John Magufuli to express concern about a worrying decline in the respect of human rights, including freedom of expression.

Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have spent nearly five months in detention in Myanmar, on charges of violating a colonial-era Official Secrets Act. At the time of their arrest in Yangon on December 12, the reporters were investigating a mass killing of Rohingya men by Buddhist villagers and Myanmar troops that took…

Nairobi, May 10, 2018 — The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta not to sign into law a cybercrimes bill that was recently passed by the National Assembly because it will stifle press freedom.

The Syrian militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham detained Ahmad al-Akhras, a photographer for the pro-opposition Syrian news website Sy24 and correspondent for the opposition-affiliated Syrian Revolutionary Media Office in Idlib, on April 28, 2018, near the northwestern Syrian city of Darkush, according to news reports, the regional press freedom group SKeyes Center for Media and…

“Being a reporter in much of the world is dangerous work. Being an investigative reporter can be deadly,” CPJ Deputy Executive Director Robert Mahoney told the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission, at a briefing in Washington, D.C. today.

Taipei, May 9, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Chinese authorities to immediately release Guo Yuzhen, a dairy farmer in Shanxi province whom police detained after she wrote an article alleging that one of the country’s largest dairy producers exploited farmers.

Berlin, May 9, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Montenegrin authorities to guarantee the safety of Olivera Lakić, an investigative journalist with the local daily Vijesti, who was shot outside her apartment building in the capital Podgorica yesterday evening, the regional news website Balkan Insight reported.

New York, May 8, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today expressed concern over the detention of Shadi Abu Zaid, a video blogger who produces and anchors his own satirical news show.