Features & Analysis

Captured by Russian security services and sentenced on false charges, Ukrainian journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko spent over four years in a Russian prison, enduring torture while trying to maintain his sanity and physical strength.  Yesypenko, who covered Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea for the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was released in June. He was first detained by Russian authorities…

For years, Bilal Jadallah was the quiet force defending independent journalism in the Gaza Strip — a mentor, protector, and the architect of rare safe spaces for Palestinian journalists working under constant threat. When he was killed in an Israeli strike on November 19, 2023, early on in the latest Israel-Gaza war, the loss reverberated…

With settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank spiking, journalists are also facing more frequent and severe attacks.  So far in 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented 11 attack incidents involving at least 23 Palestinian and international journalists by Israeli settlers — some alongside soldiers — compared with one attack on…

A barrage of bullets was waiting for ATB camera operator Percy Suárez and six other journalists when they arrived at the Las Londras ranch in Bolivia’s Guarayos province October 28, 2021, around 852 kilometers outside of the capital, La Paz. The journalists, flown in by a local farmer association, came to cover a land dispute…

Almost three years after Ethiopia’s civil war ended, Tigray remains tense and dangerous for journalists, who have been shot at, detained, raided, and swept up in a local power struggle that could trigger renewed conflict. Ethiopian foreign minister Gedion Timothewos warned the United Nations this month that in the northern state of Tigray — the…

In Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur, journalists in El-Fasher are trapped under siege, enduring violence, hunger, and relentless bombardment alongside the people whose lives they report on.  The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a group that evolved from the notorious Janjaweed militias accused of atrocities in earlier Darfur conflicts, have been fighting the Sudanese…

Punishment of hard labor, censorship, and threats of demotion over more than three decades did not stop Chinese journalist Dong Yuyu from doing his work. It was lunch with a diplomat that finally did. Dong, 63, a long-time editor and columnist whose work is well known within China and abroad, was arrested in February 2022…

Tunisian lawyer and commentator Sonia Dahmani, known for her bold defense of human rights and civil liberties, has become a symbol of the country’s escalating crackdown on dissent. Arrested in May 2024, she has been subjected to five separate legal proceedings that could put her behind bars for decades under Decree 54 — a law…

Since the Israel-Gaza war began on October 7, 2023, the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented at least 170 cases of journalists injured and two cases of journalists missing. CPJ believes the true number of injured Palestinian journalists is likely higher and continues to investigate additional cases. CPJ counts the journalists’ cases it has been…

Israel’s targeted strikes on two newspaper offices in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, which killed 31 journalists and media support workers on September 10, signal that its deadly pattern of attacking reporters and newsrooms on the grounds that they publish “terrorist” propaganda has spread firmly across the Middle East.  Yemen’s 26 September newspaper was the first to…