Features & Analysis

2017

  
Tribesmen loyal to the Houthi movement hold their weapons as they attend a gathering to mark 1,000 days of the Saudi-led military intervention in the Yemeni conflict, in Sanaa, Yemen December 21, 2017. (Reuters/Mohamed al-Sayaghi)

In Houthi-controlled Yemen, silence, exile, or detention; at least 13 journalists held

Torture. Denial of medical care. Repeated interrogations and accusations of collaborating with enemies: Yemeni journalist Youssef Ajlan’s story of his detention, which lasted over a year, hews closely to those of many journalists imprisoned for their work.

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Residents in a Valencia apartment block watch a rally on the street below in March 2014. Several of the city's critical newspapers have been forced out of circulation amid Venezuela's economic crisis and newsprint shortage. (AP/Fernando Llano)

End of the print run for Venezuela’s regional press as supplies dry up for critical outlets

The lobby of El Carabobeño includes a display of vintage cameras, engraving plates and paper cutters from the 1930s when the newspaper was founded in Valencia, Venezuela’s third-largest city. But now El Carabobeño’s modern printing press could be added to the exhibit.

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Mesale Tolu holds a news conference at her lawyer's office in Istanbul, Turkey, December 18, 2017. Tolu, who worked in Turkey as a translator for the socialist Etkin News Agency (ETHA), was released pending trial, the German news agency Deutsche Welle reported. (Reuters/Osman Orsal)

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of December 17, 2017

Journalists sentenced A court in Turkey’s southeastern Hakkâri region on December 15 sentenced Nedim Türfent, a former reporter for the shuttered pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency (DİHA), to eight years and nine months in prison for “being a member of a [terrorist] organization,” the independent news website Bianet reported.

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Members of the Popular Mobilisation Units pose with the Iraqi flag in Tal Afar. Authorities in Iraq and Syria who relied on militias to help fight Islamic State must now decide what to do with the groups. (AFP/Ahmad al-Rubaye)

Islamic State recedes but threats to journalists in Iraq and Syria remain

After three years of fighting in Iraq and Syria, the militant group Islamic State has been forced out of large swathes of territory. But local journalists and press freedom groups with whom CPJ spoke said that the defeat of Islamic State doesn’t necessarily mean that journalists will be any safer.

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A view of the historical old city of Istanbul in December 2017. A court in the city has ordered three Zaman employees to be released for the duration of their trial. (AFP/Ozan Kose)

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of December 11, 2017

Media workers released An Istanbul court on December 8 ordered three employees from the advertisement department of the now shuttered daily Zaman–Hüseyin Belli, Onur Kutlu and İsmail Küçük–to be freed pending trial, the English-language news blog Turkish Minute reported. The three are part of a trial that started in September 2017 which, as CPJ previously…

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People pay tribute to Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo in a park near Hong Kong's Victoria Habour in July 2017. The journalist died a few months after China finally agreed to release him on medical parole. (AP/Vincent Yu)

In China, medical neglect can amount to a death sentence for jailed journalists

Four months after Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo died of liver cancer shortly after his release from jail on medical parole, the writer and journalist Yang Tongyan died under similar circumstances in a Shanghai hospital. Like Liu, Yang had been seriously ill for several years, but Chinese authorities granted him medical parole only three months before…

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In defense of Uganda’s Red Pepper

CPJ has included eight staffers of the controversial Ugandan tabloid Red Pepper in its 2017 global census of imprisoned journalists. Some may disagree with that decision.

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Bangladeshi journalists cover proceedings outside a Dhaka court in May 2016. The country's vaguely worded defamation law is creating a climate of self censorship, local reporters say. (AP/A.M. Ahad)

Bangladesh’s defamation law is ‘avenue to misuse power,’ local journalists say

It started with a Facebook post about a goat and ended in a day in jail for Bangladeshi journalist Abdul Latif Morol, when a fellow journalist filed a defamation complaint against him.

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A journalist from the pro-Kurdish Ozgur Gundem gives an interview to a German TV channel at their newsroom in June 2016. A Turkish court on November 30, 2017, ordered the paper's former chief editor and former responsible editor to pay a fine of 100,000 Turkish liras (US$25,858) for not publishing a correction. (Reuters/Murad Sezer)

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of December 3, 2017

Journalists released An Istanbul court on December 6 released freelance journalist Tunca Öğreten and daily Birgün accountant Mahir Kanaat, pending the outcome of their trial, the independent news website Bianet reported.

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Members of the media cover a protest outside an Istanbul court during the trial of about a dozen newspaper employees on October 31, 2017. (AP/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of November 26, 2017

Journalists prosecuted An Istanbul court on November 25 charged freelance photojournalist Çağdaş Erdoğan with being member of and making propaganda for a “terrorist organization,” the daily Evrensel reported.

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2017