Yeganeh Rezaian

Yeganeh Rezaian is a senior researcher at CPJ. An Iranian journalist living in Washington, D.C., she previously worked as the communications director at the World Affairs Council-Washington, D.C., and has written pieces for The Washington Post and The Lily. In Iran, Rezaian covered Iranian political, social, and economic news for Bloomberg News and The National until she and her husband, former Washington Post Tehran bureau chief Jason Rezaian, were detained by Iranian authorities in 2014. Rezaian was jailed for 72 days, and then fought for her husband’s freedom, which was not granted until January 2016.

In an Iran roiled by protests, journalists face a war of attrition

In mid-September, an enterprising young Iranian reporter named Niloofar Hamedi went to Tehran’s Kasra Hospital to report on a woman arrested by the county’s morality police for not properly wearing her hijab. That woman, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, was in a coma after allegedly being beaten by police; she later died of her injuries. Hamedi, a…

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Iraqi Kurdish journalist Omed Baroshky: Press freedom ‘an illusion’ in the region

Freelance journalist Omed Baroshky spent 18 months in jail over social media posts that were critical of the authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan. One of four Iraqi Kurdish reporters listed in CPJ’s 2021 prison census, his incarceration marked yet another low point for a region that has seen a sharp deterioration in the environment for the…

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