Europe & Central Asia documents by Year:
Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of June 10
June 14, 2018 1:40 PM ET
Journalist arrested A court on June 11 ordered Berzan Güneş, a reporter for the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya news agency, to be arrested pending trial, his employer reported. The indictment accused Güneş of "making propaganda for a [terrorist] organisation" and presented as evidence the journalist's social media posts, going back to...
Police search for missing journalist in Serbia
June 14, 2018 12:25 PM ET
Berlin, June 14, 2018--The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on authorities in Vojvodina, the northern province of Serbia, to take all necessary measures to locate Stefan Cvetković, a prominent freelance journalist who went missing last night, according to local news reports....
Belarus moves to prosecute 'fake news,' control the Internet
June 8, 2018 5:03 PM ET
Kiev, June 8, 2018--The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the Belarusian parliament to reject proposed laws that could further censor the media in the country. The Prosecutor General's Office is drafting a bill on "fake news," and the lower house of parliament separately is considering amendments to...
Turkey Crackdown Chronicle: Week of June 4, 2018
June 7, 2018 2:58 PM ET
Cartoonist arrested for "insulting the president," paroled Turkish authorities on June 5 released on parole Nuri Kurtcebe, a veteran political cartoonist, who was sent to prison on June 3 after a high court rejected his appeal, according to the daily Evrensel and Kurtcebe's lawyer, Erdem Akyüz, who spoke to...
Journalist's car set on fire in Romania
June 7, 2018 2:31 PM ET
Berlin, June 5, 2018--The car of Dragoş Boţa, the editor-in-chief of local news website Pressalert, was set on fire by unknown assailants the night of June 2, 2018, in Romania's southwestern city of Timişoara, the Romanian news agency Mediafax reported. No one was injured, according to the report....
'I don't feel safe now': Journalists in Ukraine anxious after Babchenko operation
June 6, 2018 12:01 PM ET
In the week since the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, staged the assassination of Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko, little if any dust stirred up by the elaborate and controversial operation--ostensibly carried out to foil a Russian plot to kill him--has settled....
Russian court sentences Ukrainian journalist to 12 years for espionage
June 4, 2018 12:58 PM ET
New York, June 4, 2018--Russian authorities should immediately release Ukrainian journalist Roman Sushchenko, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. A Moscow city court sentenced Sushchenko, a Paris-based correspondent for Ukraine's state news agency, Ukrinform, to 12 years in a high-security prison on espionage charges today, Russian and Ukrainian...
Russian Supreme Court upholds travel ban on Norwegian journalist
June 1, 2018 4:08 PM ET
Russia's Supreme Court on May 25, 2018, upheld a December 4, 2017, decision of a Moscow city court to bar Norwegian journalist Thomas Nilsen from traveling to Russia for five years, according to media reports....
CPJ Safety Advisory - FIFA World Cup
June 1, 2018 3:53 PM ET
The FIFA World Cup will take place June 14 to July 15 at 12 venues in 11 different cities across Russia. Under FIFA rules, it will be difficult for the Russian authorities to bar individual reporters or deny visas for specific media, but those who do cover the tournament...