‘I can’t wait to go to my newsroom,’ says freed Myanmar journalist

This week, a Colombian court sentenced former paramilitary fighters Alejandro Cárdenas Orozco and Jesús Emiro Pereira Rivera for the kidnapping, rape, and torture of journalist Jineth Bedoya Lima in 2000.

Pereira was sentenced to 40 years and six months in prison for the attack, according to the Bogotá-based Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP). The court also sentenced Cárdenas to 30 years in prison for assault, according to the same source; he had already been sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2016 on charges related to the same case.

In 2016, Bedoya highlighted the personal cost of her work in “The Sadness of May the 25,” an essay in CPJ’s Attacks on the Press.

Global press freedom updates

• Safety Advisory: Challenges facing journalists trying to cover latest violence in Venezuela
• Singapore passes ‘fake news’ legislation that threatens press
• Bulgaria’s press navigate harassment, threats in pursuit of stories
• Mexico’s press question president’s commitment to press advertising reform
• Egypt tests new censorship law with handling of al-Mashhad website block
• Guatemala elections 2019: Journalist safety kit
• Telésforo Enríquez, founder of Mexican community radio station, shot dead in Oaxaca
• Ukrainian journalist in coma following assault
• Azerbaijani journalist Sevinc Osmanqizi faces harassment, threats to leak intimate photos
• López Obrador’s anti-press rhetoric leaves Mexico’s journalists feeling exposed
• Former Colombian President Uribe and allies file defamation suits against Daniel Coronell
• Iran jailed two journalists since May Day demonstration; separately, an editor has been held incommunicado and without charges
• Ugandan regulator suspends staff from 13 outlets that covered opposition leader
• Journalists threatened by government staffers in North Macedonia

Spotlight

Press freedom supporters around the world had a rare moment to celebrate with news that imprisoned Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were released as part of a presidential pardon. The reporters were convicted under a draconian law connected to their reporting on a massacre of the Rohingya in Myanmar. CPJ remains concerned about ongoing press freedom issues in the country, and maintains that they should never have been behind bars to begin with.

After walking thought the gates of Insein Prison in Yangon, Wa Lone gave a thumbs up and expressed gratitude for the global efforts to secure their release. “I’m really happy…I can’t wait to go to my newsroom,” according to Reuters and video footage.

Along with citizens, journalists, and media outlets around the world, CPJ has continuously advocated on behalf of the two imprisoned journalists. Some of our efforts included a high-level panel at the United Nations with barrister Amal Clooney and Stephen J. Adler, president and editor-in-chief of Reuters and a CPJ board member. We also publicly highlighted their case in op-eds, and published an ad in the Washington Post.

What we are reading

• Intelligence, Ethics and Bureaucracy: The Duty to Warn Jamal Khashoggi — Larry Siems, Just Security
• Can Report for America build trust in local news? A view from two communities — Andrea Wenzel, Sam Ford, Steve Bynum, and Efrat Nechushtai, Columbia Journalism Review
• Governments are deploying spyware on killers, drug lords-and journalists –John Scott-Railton and Ronald J. Deibert, The Globe and Mail
• 5 takeaways from the Reporters Committee’s analysis of press freedom threats in 2018 — Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
• Threats to Press Freedom Undermine Investigation of Dark Money — OCCRP
• Starving the press into submission — Waleed Tariq, The Express Tribune
• Security-tech companies once flocked to Myanmar. One firm’s tools were used against two journalists. — Timothy McLaughlin, The Washington Post
• The President and the Press: A Timeline of Hostilities Against the Media — Philippine Centre for Investigative Journalism
• Nicaragua’s journalists are under government attack — Natalie Southwick, CPJ South and Central Americas Program Coordinator, The Miami Herald