Washington, D.C., September 23, 2019 — Egyptian authorities must release any journalists arrested covering protests and stop restricting access to news and social media websites, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
Magdy Shandi, editor-in-chief of the Cairo-based independent newspaper al-Mashhad, planned to send 30 journalists to report from polling stations while votes were being cast in Egypt’s constitutional referendum between April 20 and April 22. He ended up ordering them to stay away, he told CPJ in a telephone interview in May. The state’s media regulator…
Relief over the release of Egyptian journalists Mahmoud Abou Zeid, known as Shawkan, and Alaa Abdelfattah from prison last month has been clouded by the conditions of their freedom. “I am happy to see your joy over my release, but I am unfortunately not free,” Abdelfattah wrote to his large following on social media yesterday.…
On International Women’s Day, CPJ has highlighted the cases of female journalists jailed around the world in retaliation for their work. At least 33 of the 251 journalists in jail at the time of CPJ’s prison census are women. At least one of those–Turkish reporter and artist Zehra Dogan–was released in February after serving a…
Washington, D.C., March 4, 2019–Egyptian photojournalist Mahmoud Abou Zeid, also known as Shawkan, was today released from prison after spending over five years in detention on anti-state charges, according to a post from his Twitter account. According to news reports, Shawkan said he was officially approved for release on Sunday night but held by police…
Washington, D.C., February 19, 2019–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns yesterday’s detention and expulsion of New York Times correspondent David D. Kirkpatrick and the ongoing detention of Egyptian journalist Ahmed Gamal Ziada, and calls on Egyptian authorities to allow journalists to travel into the country and report freely.
For the third year in a row, 251 or more journalists are jailed around the world, suggesting the authoritarian approach to critical news coverage is more than a temporary spike. China, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia imprisoned more journalists than last year, and Turkey remained the world’s worst jailer. A CPJ special report by Elana Beiser