Europe & Central Asia

On April 12, 2019, at least two journalists were injured while covering clashes between police and protesters in Gabrovo, a town in central Bulgaria, according to local media reports.

Berlin, April 17, 2019 — Finnish authorities should drop criminal defamation charges against investigative journalist Johanna Vehkoo on appeal, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

On April 13, 2019, Albanian police fired tear gas into a crowd during a demonstration in the capital, Tirana, affecting several journalists, according to news reports and video footage of the protest.

After a seven-year standoff at the Ecuadoran embassy in London, British police yesterday arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange–a development press freedom advocates had long feared.

New York, April 11, 2019 — Azerbaijani authorities should immediately lift travel restrictions on blogger Mehman Huseynov, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, April 11, 2019–The Committee to Protect Journalists today said it was deeply concerned by the U.S. prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Authorities in the United Kingdom arrested Assange this morning at the Ecuadoran Embassy as part of an extradition agreement with the U.S., according to a statement by the U.S. Department of…

14 trials in one week for Özgür Gündem publisher Over the course of one week, Turkish courts agreed to proceed with 14 cases involving Ziya Çiçekçi, a former publisher of the shuttered pro-Kurdish daily Özgür Gündem, the Mezopotamya News Agency (MA) reported. All but one of the cases involve accusations of “making propaganda for a…

New York, April 11, 2019 — Belarusian authorities should immediately drop their criminal slander investigation of independent online television station Belsat and allow the broadcaster’s reporters and staff to work freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

In 2011, I observed an astonishing spectacle in the Respublika newspaper offices in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s financial capital. Journalists were putting a modern-day twist on samizdat, a practice in the Soviet Union whereby dissidents laboriously copied illicit material to circumvent censorship.

On April 2, 2019, Valentino Gonzato, an Italian reporter with the daily newspaper Il Giornale di Vicenza, was assaulted by a group of seven people while reporting in Fornaci Park in Vicenza, a city in Northern Italy, according to his employer.