2018

Bulgarian police on September 13, 2018 detained Attila Biro, editor of the Romanian investigative site Rise Project, and Dimitar Stoyanov, from Bivol, a Bulgarian investigative news website, according to reports. The investigative journalists were detained near Radomir, a town about 35 km west of the capital, Sofia, Bivol reported.

Turkey detains Austrian writer Austrian citizen Max Zirngast, a contributor to several magazines and a student of political science, according to the OSCE, was detained by anti-terrorism police in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, on September 11, Deutsche Welle reported. Deutsche Welle quoted a tweet of German magazine re:volt–one of his employers–as saying that Zirngast was taken…

The Committee to Protect Journalists wrote to Annika Ben David, Sweden’s ambassador-at-large for human rights, as part of a coalition of eight other civil society organizations.

Brussels, September 12, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today welcomed the vote by members of the European Parliament in favor of a resolution against Hungary for breaching EU values, and called on the bloc to keep up pressure on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government.

Journalists in court The prosecutor in the trial of imprisoned journalist Nazlı Ilıcak, who is charged with “revealing information regarding state security that is supposed to be secret for espionage proposes,” asked the 26th Istanbul Court of Serious Crimes for a life sentence, the daily Evrensel reported on September 6. Ilıcak attended the hearing via…

New York, September 6, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Uzbek authorities to end their harassment of bloggers covering religious issues, and to release at least four individuals arrested for their writing. Police in several Uzbek cities made arrests between August 28 and September 4, according to media reports.

New York, September 4, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned a Ukrainian court’s decision to grant the country’s prosecutor general’s office permission to access the phone records of Natalie Sedletska, a reporter, editor, and television presenter for Schemes, an investigative journalism project of the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian Service.

New York, August 31, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on police in the United Kingdom to immediately release producer Trevor Birney and journalist Barry McCaffrey, who were arrested on suspicion of stealing confidential documents today, according to the Belfast Telegraph and other news reports.

Police assault reporters in Istanbul Turkish police violently attacked several reporters trying to cover a weekly silent protest, known as the Saturday Mothers, in Istanbul’s Galatasaray Square on August 25, the New York Times reported. The reporters, alongside activists participating in the protest, were attacked by the police during the 700th vigil for those who…

New York, August 28, 2018–Reporter Vladimir Kovacevic of the independent Bosnian Serb television station BNTV was badly beaten on August 26 after reporting on an anti-government protest in Banja Luka, the de facto capital of the Serb-controlled part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, BNTV reported.