For the second year in a row, the number of journalists imprisoned for their work hit a historical high, as the U.S. and other Western powers failed to pressure the world’s worst jailers–Turkey, China, and Egypt–into improving the bleak climate for press freedom. A CPJ special report by Elana Beiser
Receding media freedom in established European democracies and in the United States has emboldened authoritarian governments in Russia and other former Soviet countries to crack down on independent voices at home. I am sharing this information today with the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe-known as the Helsinki Commission-and the House Freedom of…
New York, September 7, 2017–The French justice ministry should dismiss criminal defamation charges the government of Azerbaijan brought against journalists Elise Lucet and Laurent Richard, and allow the pair to continue their work without obstruction, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
New York, August 24, 2017–The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Azerbaijani authorities today to immediately release Mehman Aliyev, head of the country’s only independent news agency, Turan. Azerbaijan’s Tax Ministry today ordered Aliyev to be detained as part of an investigation launched against Turan last week into allegations of tax evasion, according to media…
New York, July 20, 2017–A Baku court today convicted Russian-Israeli blogger Aleksandr Lapshin to three years in jail for illegally crossing the state border, international and Azerbaijani media reported. The charges are related to three trips that Lapshin made between April 2011 and June 2016 to the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Azerbaijan and Armenia…
New York, June 20, 2017–Azerbaijani authorities should immediately release Fikret Faramazoglu, chief editor of the news website Journalistic Research Center, from prison and investigate the journalist’s claims that he was severely beaten in custody, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Faramazoglu was sentenced on June 14 to seven years in prison for extortion and…
The Committee to Protect Journalists joined 22 international rights organizations in calling on Georgia’s Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili to ensure that the case of Afgan Mukhtarli, an Azerbaijani journalist living in exile in Tbilisi who is now in custody in the country’s capital, Baku, is fully investigated. CPJ documented last month how Mukhtarli was abducted…
New York, May 30, 2017–Azerbaijani authorities should immediately release freelance journalist Afgan Mukhtarli and allow him to return to neighboring Georgia, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Mukhtarli, whose wife reported him missing from their home in Tbilisi, Georgia, last night, is being held at a detention center in Baku, Azerbaijan, regional and local…