Features & Analysis

2020

  
A woman makes a phone call in front of India-owned Airtel on October 10, 2011 in Abuja. A Nigerian NGO on February 25, 2020, sued the Nigerian Communications Commission over warrantless access to ‘call data.’ (AFP/Pius Utomi Ekpei)

Nigeria’s communications regulator sued over warrantless access to ‘call data’

Laws and Rights Awareness Initiative, a Nigerian nongovernmental organization, filed a lawsuit on February 25 against the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) over regulations granting warrantless access to telecom subscribers’ information, including “call data.” The suit claims that accessing the information “violates and will likely further violate” Nigerians’ constitutional right to privacy, according to a copy…

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A view of Ankara in April 2019. Turkish journalist Yavuz Selim, who was attacked in the city last year, says he continues to receive threats. (Reuters/Umit Bektas)

‘The goal is to make us stop writing’: Turkish journalists on attacks and threats

Eight months after he was attacked outside his Ankara home with baseball bats, Yavuz Selim Demirağ still has trouble sleeping. “The worry of suffering another attack at any minute messed with my psychology. Sometimes I feel like I am being followed,” the Turkish journalist said. “In the end, the threat continues. Because the attackers are…

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Graffiti shows the likeness of murdered photojournalist Rubén Espinosa and the eyes and names of the other four victims, on the wall of Mexico City attorney general's headquarters in Mexico City, in July 2016. Deadly violence against journalists is rare in the capital, but reporters covering organized crime in the city say threats are on the rise. (AP/Marco Ugarte)

Threats draw near, damaging Mexico City’s reputation as safe haven for reporters

Emir Olivares was almost too stunned to speak when, on December 6, he found two men in the bedroom of his apartment in Mexico City.

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Vietnamese blogger Tran Thi Nga is adjusting to life in the U.S. after authorities ordered her into forced exile as a condition of her early release from prison. Nga served three years of a nine-year sentence over her reporting. (Family photo)

Freedom at a high cost for Vietnamese blogger Tran Thi Nga

When Vietnamese blogger Tran Thi Nga was arrested by authorities on January 21, 2017, she did not know at the time it would likely be the last time she would ever be in her home in northern Ha Nam province.

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A man reads at a stand of the Israeli technology firm NSO Group at the annual European Police Congress in Berlin, Germany, February 4, 2020. WhatsApp has alleged the group's technology enabled the remote surveillance of members of civil society via their phones, with several Indian journalists among the targets. (Reuters/Hannibal Hanschke)

After WhatsApp spyware allegations, Indian journalists demand government transparency

In the summer of 2019, Saroj Giri was preparing a lecture on the panopticon—an 18th century system to surveil an entire prison from a single viewpoint—when a message lit up his phone. It was from WhatsApp, warning Giri that someone had tried to hack the popular messaging app to spy on his cell phone remotely.

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A billboard of President Faure Gnassingbe is seen in Lome, Togo, on February 19, 2020. CPJ recently joined a letter calling for the Togolese government to maintain internet access throughout the upcoming election. (Reuters/Luc Gnago)

CPJ joins letter calling on Togo government not to shut down internet

The Committee to Protect Journalists joined 27 other press freedom and human rights organizations in a letter dated February 19 calling for authorities in Togo to maintain the stability and openness of the internet and social media platforms.

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Campaign posters pictured in Tehran on February 20. Ahead of parliamentary elections, authorities increased pressure on Iran's journalists with arrests, detentions and legal action. (Supplied to Reuters via West Asia News Agency/Nazanin Tabatabaee)

Iran harasses, intimidates journalists ahead of parliamentary elections

Elections are always problematic for journalists in Iran, as the government attempts to threaten the press into silence. The parliamentary elections on February 21 are no exception.

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Journalist Valley Rose Hungyo sits at her dinner table in her home in Manipur, India. Hungyo recently talked to CPJ about running the only newspaper for Nagas in Manipur. (CPJ/Aliya Iftikhar)

Journalist Valley Rose Hungyo on running the only daily newspaper for Nagas in Manipur

Editor Valley Rose Hungyo founded the bilingual Tangkhul and English Aja Daily, the only daily newspaper among the Naga people in India’s northeastern Manipur state, in the early 1990s with her late husband. They saw a need for a Naga-language paper, amid a media scene in the state dominated by English and Manipuri outlets.

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Journalist Babie Shirin is pictured in the office of the Imphal Free Press newspaper. The chief minister of Manipur accused the publication of criminal defamation in relation to an article Shirin wrote in 2018. (IFP/Telheiba)

Manipur’s ex-journalist chief minister pursues Imphal Free Press for defamation

On the morning of February 1, instead of working on her usual assignments for the Imphal Free Press, journalist Babie Shirin drove with the newspaper’s publisher Mayengbam Satyajit Singh to a court on the other side of town. On arrival, they were arrested, then granted bail on a bond of 30,000 rupees (US$420) each. Their…

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A woman vendor waits for customers as she uses her phone at the 'Computer Village' in Ikeja district in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos on May 31, 2017. Nigeria’s police have used telecom surveillance to lure and arrest journalists. (Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye)

How Nigeria’s police used telecom surveillance to lure and arrest journalists

As reporters for Nigeria’s Premium Times newspaper, Samuel Ogundipe and Azeezat Adedigba told CPJ they spoke often over the phone. They had no idea that their regular conversations about work and their personal lives were creating a record of their friendship.

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2020