Middle East & North Africa

On May 10, Saman Barzinji, the health minister of the Iraqi Kurdistan regional government, announced that the COVID-19 pandemic no longer posed a threat to the region, and that the area would gradually reopen, according to news reports.

The Committee to Protect Journalists today joined other human rights and free expression organizations in a letter calling on the Bahraini government to release all imprisoned journalists and other political prisoners.

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

In recent months, the stability of the Iranian government has been threatened by widespread protests in late 2019 and the shooting down of a Ukrainian civilian aircraft in January 2020 amid heightened tensions with the U.S. The latest threat is the coronavirus pandemic, which has hit Iran harder than any country except China or Italy.…

In early 2020, a journalist in Iran received a form from Iran’s National E-commerce Union, a nominally independent group that is close to the government, requesting their name, the news website they work for, and their IP address. “With all due respect,” it read, “provide the following information to prevent any potential problem during future…

Elections are always problematic for journalists in Iran, as the government attempts to threaten the press into silence. The parliamentary elections on February 21 are no exception.

In October 2018, authorities arrested Pouyan Khoshhal as he drove through the northern Iranian city of Rasht, by the Caspian Sea. The reason for the journalist’s arrest: his use of the word “death” instead of “martyrdom” to describe a Shiite saint in an article for the reformist newspaper Ebtekar.

He couldn’t have known it at the time, but when a Moroccan court sentenced editor Mohammed al-Herd on August 4, 2003, to three years in prison, he was emblematic of a new trend, one that would accelerate and continue to the present day.

Pegasus, the cellphone spyware tool sold by the Israeli firm NSO Group, is one of the most powerful surveillance systems governments can buy, experts say. Researchers who study it have detected “45 countries where Pegasus operators may be conducting surveillance operations,” and detailed its capabilities: whoever tricks the target into clicking on a link that…

On October 10, Mahmoud Abu Zeid turned 33. It was the Egyptian photojournalist’s first birthday out of prison since his August 2013 arrest. But in spite of his celebrated freedom in March, the police monitoring conditions of his probation have, in effect, rendered his release obsolete.