Detained

Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, February 13, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by Kurdistan security forces’ assault on 12 news crews covering a February 9 protest by teachers and other public employees over unpaid salaries, which resulted in at least 22 journalists teargassed, two arrested, and a television station raided. “The aggressive treatment meted out to…

New York, February 10, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a February 6 Azerbaijani court decision remanding Toplum TV presenter Shahnaz Baylargizi to 3 ½ months in pretrial detention over foreign funding allegations and calls for her immediate release. “Veteran journalist Shahnaz Baylargizi’s arrest underscores how Azerbaijani authorities are exploiting allegations of Western funding to silence leading independent…

New York, February 7, 2025 – In Georgia, resurgent protests demanding new elections have been met with a violent police crackdown in which authorities forcefully obstructed or assaulted more than a dozen journalists covering the demonstrations. Protests against the Georgian Dream party’s disputed October election victory and the November suspension of European Union accession talks…

New York, February 6, 2025—Taliban intelligence agents raided the Kabul station of Radio Begum on Tuesday, February 4, suspended broadcast operations, detained two unidentified media workers, and confiscated documents and essential broadcasting equipment, including computers, hard drives, and mobile devices. The Taliban’s Ministry of Information and Culture accused the outlet of “non-compliance” with regulations and…

Berlin, February 3, 2025—Hungarian authorities should immediately drop misdemeanor charges against two journalists who were arrested in a parking lot as they waited to question Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and detained for three hours, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday. On January 30, police removed the independent online outlet Telex’s reporter Dániel Simor and…

Bangkok, February 3, 2025—Cambodia should release journalists Duong Akhara and Lay Socheat, both of whom have been arrested and detained for incitement after publishing a video allegedly showing a man being tortured in a cyberscam center, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday. Local S.A. TVHD Online’s Akhara and Cambodia Star Daily News 24/24’s Socheat…

New York, January 31, 2025—A Taliban court in Kabul sentenced Sayed Rahim Saeedi, the editor and producer of the ANAR Media YouTube channel, to three years in prison on charges of disseminating anti-Taliban propaganda. He was sentenced on October 27, 2024, but those with knowledge of the case initially refrained from publicizing it out of…

New York, January 30, 2025—Ukrainian military officers detained three journalists for eight hours on accusations of “illegal border crossing” on January 6 in Sudzha, a Ukrainian-controlled town in Russia’s Kursk region. The journalists — Ukrainian freelance reporter Petro Chumakov, Kurt Pelda, correspondent with Swiss media group CH Media, and freelance camera operator Josef Zehnder — had army…

Washington, D.C., January 22, 2025—Prominent Sudanese journalist Yahya Hamad Fadlallah has died in a hospital, one month after Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) arrested him and his son at their home in the capital Khartoum on December 11, according to news reports. Fadlallah was tortured by the army, falsely accused of collaborating with the paramilitary Rapid…

New York, January 22, 2025—Pakistani authorities must stop deporting and harassing Afghan journalists who have fled Afghanistan because of threats to their lives, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday. During the first week of January 2025, Pakistani security forces detained two Afghan journalists and their families before deporting them to Afghanistan, according to a…