CPJ submits report on Brazil to United Nations Universal Periodic Review
Brazil’s human rights record is under review by the United Nations Human Rights Council through the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). This U.N. mechanism is a peer-review process that surveys the human rights performance of member states, monitoring progress from previous review cycles, and presents a list of recommendations on how a country can better fulfill…
CPJ joins call for the release of Egyptian journalist Alaa Abdelfattah, lawyer Mohamed al-Baker
CPJ has joined 46 human rights organizations and individuals in calling for Egyptian authorities to immediately release Egyptian journalist and blogger Alaa Abdelfattah and his lawyer Mohamed al-Baker after three years of imprisonment. The September 29 letter also calls on British authorities to intervene to secure the release of Abdelfattah, who obtained U.K. citizenship while…
CPJ’s Yeganeh Rezaian on mass protests and journalist arrests in Iran
When mass protests erupted in Iran more than a week ago, the government cracked down hard. While clashes between security forces and demonstrators left many dead and disruptions to internet service made information hard to obtain, CPJ learned that security forces had arrested at least 28 journalists as of September 29. (Click here for CPJ’s…
‘An open-air prison’: Kashmiri journalists on how travel bans undermine press freedom
When Indian immigration officials stopped freelance Kashmiri journalist Aakash Hassan at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi international airport on July 26, they held him for several hours and questioned him about his family, his professional background and his reason for traveling – and refused to allow him to board his Sri Lanka flight because, they said, he was listed…
Journalists tell CPJ how Tunisia’s tough new constitution curbs their access to information
When a CPJ researcher sat down with Lotfi Hajji, Tunisia bureau chief of Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera at a coffee shop in Tunis in July, we noticed that a man sitting directly behind us was recording our conversation on his phone. When we stood up to take a selfie with him in the background, the man…
Spain is set to reform ‘gag law,’ but press freedom groups are skeptical
In May, Diego Díaz Alonso, editor of Spanish non-profit news outlet Nortes, was surprised to receive a 601 euro (US$611) fine in the mail. The letter claimed that Díaz Alonso had resisted police and obstructed emergency services as they were treating a homeless person lying unconscious in the street in Gijón, in northern Spain, the previous summer….
US reporters wary of online, legal threats in the wake of the overturn of Roe v. Wade
In May, editors at the pro-abortion rights news website Rewire took the extraordinary step of removing reporters’ biographies from the web site. The move was a safety precaution: After the leak of a draft of a majority Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, reporters at Rewire grew concerned about…
In 2022, journalist killings continue unabated in Mexico amid a climate of impunity
At least 13 journalists have been killed in Mexico in the first eight months of 2022, the highest number the Committee to Protect Journalists has ever documented in the country in a single year. In a country characterized by corruption and organized crime, it’s unclear how many were targeted directly because of their work. CPJ…
CPJ joins calls for Turkish regulator to reverse ad ban on Evrensel daily
On August 26, 2022, the Committee to Protect Journalists joined the International Press Institute and 17 Turkish and international groups in a joint statement calling for Turkey’s Press Ad Agency, the state regulator of government advertisements in print media, to reverse its cancellation of advertisements carried by the leftist daily Evrensel. In the statement, the…
CPJ joins letters urging U.S. government to hold NSO Group accountable on spyware
The Committee to Protect Journalists joined human rights and press freedom organizations in separate actions in August urging the United States government to hold NSO Group accountable for providing Pegasus spyware to governments that have used the tool to secretly surveil journalists around the world. In a joint letter to Acting Solicitor General Brian Fletcher…