Features & Analysis

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 174 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…

A new tax law in India that grants authorities sweeping powers to access emails, cloud accounts, and encrypted devices during searches has generated widespread concern among journalists and digital rights advocates, while adding to a raft of tax legislation around the world that could be weaponized against the media.  India’s parliament on August 12 passed…

Iranian-American journalist Reza Valizadeh has spent more than a year imprisoned in Iran, enduring severe psychological torment and relentless interrogations for the simple fact that he is a journalist. Initially detained in Tehran’s Evin Prison, his already dire situation deteriorated significantly after a devastating Israeli attack on the facility. Valizadeh was transferred to the dangerously overcrowded and medically inadequate Fashafouyeh Prison, where extreme neglect and inhumane…

Journalist Dil Bhusan Pathak could face up to five years in prison for alleging on his YouTube channel that Jaiveer Singh Deuba, the son of two powerful Nepalese politicians, was linked to questionable deals involving the new Hilton Kathmandu. His case illustrates a disturbing trend in Nepal, where journalists reporting on alleged corruption by high-profile individuals and state institutions…

Radio Azattyq director Torokul Doorov says it is “very difficult” for journalists not to become activists in the face of “unfairness and injustice” in Kazakhstan. “You just want to start screaming,” says Doorov, who joined the Kazakh arm of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in 2014, and the outlet grew to be one of Kazakhstan’s most influential…

When a South African solar panel company last month dropped its legal battle over a gag order preventing journalist Bongani Hans from reporting on allegations of misleading clients, Hans told the Committee to Protect Journalists that he saw it as “a victory for media and press freedom.” But for Hans and others in the country’s…

In four years, the Taliban have annihilated Afghanistan’s independent media sector and supplanted it with their own propaganda empire and sophisticated digital bots that flood social media with pro-Taliban content. CPJ interviewed 10 Afghan journalists, inside and outside the country, who said that  independent media, which used to reach millions of people, have largely been…

For over two decades, Bolivian journalists have endured intimidation, legal harassment, and violence from political actors intent on silencing dissent. Now, journalists fear those attacks may intensify as the country races toward a hotly contested presidential election, in which no clear frontrunner has emerged. “We’re not choosing between democracy and authoritarianism” said reporter Rodrigo Fernández from Radio Erbol, one of…