Europe & Central Asia

Berlin, May 16, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Slovak authorities to respect the confidentiality of journalistic sources. Slovak police in Bratislava yesterday seized the mobile phone of Czech investigative reporter Pavla Holcova while questioning her for their investigation into the murder of her colleague, Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak, and his girlfriend, the…

The Committee to Protect Journalists joined a coalition of 11 other international press freedom and human rights advocacy groups, in calling on U.S. Congress to require lasting human rights protection in Uzbekistan during President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s first official visit to the U.S. on May 16 and 17.

New York, May 15, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today expressed concern over the Ukraine Security Service’s (SBU) search of the Kiev office of the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti and detention of the office director, Kirill Vyshynsky.

Turkmen police detained Ashgabat-based journalist Soltan Achilova on May 9, 2018, according to her employer, the Turkmen service of the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), locally known as Azatlyk.

Berlin, May 14, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Bulgarian authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into an attack on investigative journalist Hristo Geshov, who was beaten on May 10 outside his home in the northwestern town of Cherven Bryag, and guarantee his safety.

Vladislav Pleshakov, a journalist from the privately owned television channel 1+1, was assaulted in an upscale neighborhood near Kiev on April 21, 2018, while filming for an investigative report about real estate allegedly owned by Ukraine’s finance minister, Oleksandr Danyliuk, according to the Kiev-based media monitoring organization Detector Media, which cites 1+1’s press service.

Journalists arrested On May 3, authorities in the southern city of Mersin transferred İsmail Çoban, former news editor for the shuttered Kurdish language daily Azadiya Welat, to the southeastern city of Diyarbakır, where he will remain in custody pending trial, according to reports.

“Being a reporter in much of the world is dangerous work. Being an investigative reporter can be deadly,” CPJ Deputy Executive Director Robert Mahoney told the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission, at a briefing in Washington, D.C. today.

Berlin, May 9, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Montenegrin authorities to guarantee the safety of Olivera Lakić, an investigative journalist with the local daily Vijesti, who was shot outside her apartment building in the capital Podgorica yesterday evening, the regional news website Balkan Insight reported.

As Hungary’s new Parliament holds its first session, where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is due to form his third consecutive government after a landslide re-election a month ago, journalists critical of his power will closely monitor his words for hints of what awaits them in the next four years.