Syria / Middle East & North Africa

  
Marc and Debra Tice, the parents of Austin Tice, who went missing in Syria in 2012, hold up photos of him during a press conference at the Press Club in Beirut, Lebanon, on July 20, 2017. (AP/Bilal Hussein)

A small thing you can do to help #FreeAustinTice

In August 2012, freelance journalist Austin Tice disappeared while reporting in Syria. A brief video made public a few weeks later showed Tice as a captive. He has not been heard from since.

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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 worker cleans a EU flag in Berlin on May 19, 2017. The EU parliament is due to vote on October 12 on a proposed review mechanism of surveillance tool exports. (AFP/John MacDougall)

Press at risk as EU-based companies export surveillance software to hostile regimes

In August, Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen told the daily newspaper Information that the government had authorized sales of online surveillance software to several Middle Eastern countries. While acknowledging the potential for human rights violations that could result from the use of these tools, the minister said that Denmark has an interest in the fight…

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How CPJ researches the killing and jailing of journalists

Who is a journalist? In the era of citizen journalism, activist journalism and now “fake” journalism, the question is not academic. The Committee to Protect Journalists has just published its annual census of journalists in prison and next week it will release its survey of killed journalists.

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Infographic: Islamic State’s assault on the press

When Mosul fell to Islamic State on June, 10, 2014, it sparked one of the biggest attacks on press freedom in recent times. Newspapers were shuttered, TV channels were ransacked, radio stations disappeared from the airwaves, and dozens of journalists vanished. Within days, the militants had a monopoly on information output.

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Syrians protest the killing and torture of women by President Assad's regime in 2011. The blogger Tal al-Mallohi remains in jail in Syria despite a court ordering her release. (AP/Mohammad Hannon)

On International Women’s Day, CPJ recognizes nine female journalists jailed for their work

Coverage of protests and riots. Revelations of official corruption and graft. Major natural disasters. Investigations into deplorable living conditions. These are some of the important issues journalists cover in their role as the Fourth Estate.

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Pictures of filmmaker Naji Jerf are held up at his funeral in Gaziantep in December. Syrian media activists based in Turkey say the murder of Jerf and two other journalists makes the country feels less secure. (STR/AFP)

For journalists fleeing Islamic State, Turkey ‘is as dangerous as Syria’

For the past two years, activists and journalists seeking refuge from Islamic State repression in Raqqa would take sanctuary across the border in southern Turkey, setting up safe houses and offices, and darting back to Syria regularly with camera equipment and other vital supplies. But that sanctuary is now under threat.

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From Charlie Hebdo in Paris to bloggers in Bangladesh, extremists target press

Thursday marks one year since two gunmen burst into the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and opened fire. Over the following year, CPJ documented the deaths of 28 journalists who were killed for their work by Islamic militant groups such as Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. This StoryMap charts the deadly attacks that took…

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A young Syrian journalist carries a camera and a gun on February 9, 2014, in Aleppo. (AFP/Aleppo Media Center/Mohammed Wesam)

The militarization of the press in Syria

Ahmed Abu al-Hamza, “Software” as he was known by his friends, stood behind the camera on November 6 as a gunman explained how rebel forces took Tel Sukayk, a strategic hilltop north of Hama, from government forces. Suddenly the camera’s sound recorder picked up the faint thud of a mortar shell firing in the distance.…

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CPJ joins call for Syria to drop charges against press freedom activists

The Committee to Protect Journalists has joined 16 other human rights and press freedom organisations calling on Syrian authorities to drop charges against Mazen Darwish, the founder of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, who was released from prison on August 10.

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