Azerbaijan goes to the polls amid muzzled media and blocked websites
When it comes to silencing critics, Azerbaijani authorities have been industrious and methodical. Ahead of snap presidential elections scheduled for April 11, potential opposition candidates have been either jailed or barred from running, and the political landscape has been cleansed of virtually all formal avenues of expressing dissent.
CPJ calls on Niger to stop persecuting journalist Baba Alpha
New York, April 5, 2018–Nigerien authorities should reverse the expulsion of journalist Baba Alpha and ensure his safety, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. After jailing him for a year, authorities on April 3 released Baba Alpha, a journalist with the privately owned radio and television news agency Bonferey, and drove him to Labbezanga,…
Prosecutor in Ukraine flouts court, refuses to return journalist’s passport
New York, April 4, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Ukrainian prosecutors to return the passport of Fikret Huseynli, a Dutch national of Azerbaijani origin, and to respect a district court’s April 2 ruling that the journalist should not be extradited to Azerbaijan or have his movements restricted.
CPJ Safety Advisory: Security in Iraqi Kurdistan (KRG)
At least 15 journalists were assaulted and seven detained while covering widespread protests across Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq between March 25 and March 27, according to CPJ research and local press freedom and human rights groups. The wave of detentions and assaults has sparked fear among local journalists and press freedom groups that Kurdish authorities will…
Kenyan journalists assaulted by police at Nairobi airport
Nairobi, March 27, 2018–The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on authorities in Kenya to immediately investigate the assault of journalists by police at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi yesterday. According to media reports and journalists who spoke with CPJ, police officers attacked reporters covering an opposition politician’s return to the country, causing…
Censorship, surveillance, and harassment: China cracks down on critics
Hours after the Chinese Communist Party proposed a constitutional change last month to lift presidential term limits, any words or phrases that remotely suggested President Xi Jingping was seeking a life term were blocked from social media. Censors targeted everything from “Emperor Xi,” “The Emperor’s Dream,” and “Dream of Returning to the Great Qing,” to…
DRC security forces harass journalists covering Kabila protests
Security forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on December 31, 2017, harassed at least three journalists who were reporting on protests in the capital, Kinshasa, over President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to stand down when his second five-year term in office expired in 2016 and his refusal to hold elections, according to local journalists…
Chinese authorities briefly detain RFI correspondent in Beijing
Police in Beijing detained French journalist Heike Schmidt, the China correspondent for the French Foreign Ministry-funded outlet, Radio France Internationale, for about an hour on March 9, 2018, and confiscated her tape recorder, according to the journalist’s outlet.
Journalists covering US white supremacists must weigh risks to selves and families
Michael Edison Hayden was one of the first foreign journalists on the ground after the Nepalese earthquake in 2015– the “ground was still shaking” when he arrived, he said. He’s reported from the disputed territory between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, and gone door-to-door in Phoenix, searching for a mass killer. But, Hayden said, reporting…
CPJ joins call for Kyrgyzstan to end restrictive media practices
The Committee to Protect Journalists joined a coalition of 28 other international press freedom organizations to call on Kyrgyz authorities to drop defamation lawsuits and to end the practice of using disproportionate fines, travel bans and other harsh penalties to punish critical media outlets and journalists.