Asia

2020

  
People protest Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa outside his office in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on February 11, 2020, demanding investigations into disappearances during the civil war. Journalists are wary of the Rajapaksa brothers' return to power. (AP/Eranga Jayawardena)

Sri Lankan journalists turn to self-censorship under Rajapaksas as hope for justice fades

Nadesapillai Vithyatharan is a rare survivor, one of the few journalists abducted during Sri Lanka’s civil war who lives to tell the story.

Read More ›

Akash Yadav, center, a Varanasi-based journalist with Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar spoke to CPJ India Correspondent Kunal Majumder about being a victim of both local police and a private hospital lobby. (Somi Das)

Mission Journal: Journalists in India’s Uttar Pradesh say threat of attack or prosecution looms large

Also available in हिंदी में On March 26, two days after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a national lockdown to control the spreading of COVID-19, Hindi-language daily Jansandesh Times reported that a tribe in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh state, didn’t have enough to eat due to the sudden announcement and that children were eating grass.…

Read More ›

AFP photographer Diptendu Dutta works during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the spread of COVID-19 in Siliguri, India, on April 10, 2020. Freelance journalists have faced risks to their lives and livelihoods amid the COVID-19 pandemic. (AFP)

Freelance journalists risk lives and livelihoods amid COVID-19 pandemic

Johannesburg-based freelance journalist Yeshiel Panchia was on his way to cover a story about a local developer who had found a way to keep his wage laborers employed during South Africa’s coronavirus lockdown by letting them live on the construction site so that they didn’t have to leave “home” in contravention of strict rules.

Read More ›

People walk on a street in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 30, 2020. CPJ recently spoke with journalist Brian Hioe on covering COVID-19 in Taiwan. (AP/Chiang Ying-ying)

Reporter Brian Hioe on dealing with misinformation in Taiwan amid pandemic

Brian Hioe is an editor for the New Bloom Magazine, a news website that covers social issues, politics, and culture in the Asia Pacific region. He also works as a freelance journalist in Taiwan, where the government has been praised for its responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read More ›

A police officer walks inside a shelter set up for migrants in Mumbai, India, April 6, 2020. The Indian Supreme Court recently passed a directive in response to alleged fake news that prompted migration in the country. (Reuters/Francis Mascarenhas)

Lawyer Apar Gupta on what the Indian Supreme Court’s order on COVID-19 coverage means for journalists

On March 31, the Indian Supreme Court passed a directive making it compulsory for news outlets to carry the government’s official version on any news related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read More ›

Workers wearing protective suits disinfect a passenger train on the outskirts of Kolkata, India, on April 6, 2020. Indian freelance journalist Vidya Krishnan recently spoke with CPJ about the challenges of covering the COVID-19 pandemic. (Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri)

Indian journalist Vidya Krishnan on navigating harassment and government obstruction while covering COVID-19

Vidya Krishnan, a freelance reporter who has covered healthcare in India for 17 years, says she has never seen the kind of harassment and threats that health reporters have received while covering COVID-19.

Read More ›

Journalist Raihana Maqbool reporting in Kashmir. (Aliya Bashir)

Kashmiri journalist Raihana Maqbool on reporting on COVID-19 amid ongoing restrictions

Journalists in Jammu and Kashmir have spent the past eight months navigating an intense crackdown by Indian authorities in the region, including unprecedented restrictions on communications and the longest internet shutdown in a democracy. Now, they have the added challenge on trying to report on the COVID-19 pandemic. India has instituted a strict 21-day national…

Read More ›

Government Technology Agency staff demonstrate Singapore's new contact-tracing smartphone app called TraceTogether, as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus on March 20, 2020. Bill Marczak, an expert in cellphone surveillance technology, told CPJ about the implications for journalists as governments ramp up their capacity to monitor citizens in a time of crisis. (AFP/Catherine Lai)

Expert Bill Marczak: What journalists should know about coronavirus cellphone tracking

Governments all over the world have been considering cellphone surveillance to help track and contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Read More ›

A screen shows a CCTV state media broadcast of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Wuhan at a shopping centre in Beijing on March 10, 2020. Researchers at Citizen Lab have documented Chinese platforms censoring keywords related to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. (Reuters/Thomas Peter)

Q&A: Citizen Lab documents Chinese censorship of coronavirus keywords

Li Wenliang, a doctor in Wuhan who was reprimanded for warning colleagues of a new coronavirus earlier this year, used the messaging app WeChat to share his concerns on December 30, 2019, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Read More ›

A journalist uses a phone to take photos during a National People's Congress press conference in Beijing in March 2019. The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China annual survey finds conditions for the foreign press deteriorated in 2019. (AFP/Wang Zhao)

China uses visa process to intimidate foreign press, FCCC survey finds

Conditions for foreign correspondents in China deteriorated in 2019, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) annual survey found. The report, published today, noted that for a second year none of the respondents gave a positive response when asked if conditions had improved.

Read More ›

2020