Europe & Central Asia

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 the media law.

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 the news website OdaTV.

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.

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.

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 media reported.

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.

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 may come under surveillance. Journalists are…

Journalist detained Istanbul police on May 28 detained an editor for the leftist news website Sendika, Ali Ergin Demirhan, at the website’s office on suspicion of “making propaganda for a [terrorist] organization,” in relation to the journalist’s work, his employer reported.

Minutes after news broke that prominent Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko had been murdered in Ukraine, social media exploded with messages mourning the loss of a bright, sometimes-too-outspoken journalist. Friends and colleagues wrote moving obituaries, and groups including CPJ condemned the killing. Impromptu memorials in both Kiev and Moscow sprouted, as they all too often do,…