Legal Action

Taipei, September 2, 2024—Hong Kong authorities are criminalizing normal journalistic work with the “openly political” conviction of two editors from the shuttered news portal Stand News for subversion, the Committee to Protect Journalists and four other rights groups said. By weaponizing the legal system against journalists, China has ruthlessly reneged on guarantees given to Hong…

New York, August 30, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the sentencing Friday of Russian journalist Sergey Mikhaylov to eight years in prison on “fake news” charges and calls on Russian authorities to release him immediately.    “The sentencing of journalist Sergey Mikhaylov to eight years in prison on what Russian authorities label as ‘fake…

New York, August 29, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the decision by Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court in July to uphold the liquidation of Kloop Media, a nonprofit that runs the investigative news website Kloop. “The forced shuttering of international award–winning investigative outlet Kloop is a shameful episode in the history of modern Kyrgyzstan — a…

Berlin, August 29, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Russia’s recent launch of a spate of criminal investigations into foreign journalists reporting on the Ukrainian army’s advance into Russia’s Kursk region. Since the Ukrainian army started its incursion on August 6, Russian authorities have opened probes into seven foreign journalists accompanying Ukrainian forces to report on the conflict in the western town of…

The Committee to Protect Journalists has submitted a report on the state of press freedom and journalist safety in Iraq and semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan to the United Nations Human Rights Council ahead of its January to February 2025 Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session. The U.N. mechanism is a peer review of each member state’s human…

Washington, D.C., August 28, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed the news that jurors had reached a decision in the trial of Robert Telles, who was found guilty of killing Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German. “While Wednesday’s ruling will not bring Jeff German back to his family, friends, and colleagues, the conviction sends an…

Istanbul, August 27, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists urges X, formerly Twitter, site administrators not to comply with a Turkish court’s order to block accounts belonging to several journalists and media outlets. “Turkish authorities continue to practice the ‘virtual patrolling’ and censorship of social media users under the false guise of national security,” said Gulnoza…

New York, August 23, 2024— The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about a new law, to be enforced by the Taliban’s morality police, which bans journalists from publishing or broadcasting content that they believe violates Sharia law or insults Muslims. “The Law for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice grants…

Zambian journalist Thomas Allan Zgambo is facing up to seven years in prison for his reporting on corruption and poor governance in the southern African nation. It is at least the third time that Zgambo has risked imprisonment for his online journalism, a growing threat for journalists in many African countries. On August 6, Zgambo was arrested on…

Cameroonian journalist Samuel Bondjock has had to appear in court more than 30 times in almost 30 months to face criminal defamation charges that could put him in jail — even though the country’s media regulator dismissed the complaint against him in 2022. His next appearance in the capital Yaounde is scheduled for August 27,…