The Torch is a weekly newsletter from the Committee to Protect Journalists that brings you the latest press freedom and journalist safety news from around the world. Subscribe here.
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned Thursday’s conviction by a Hong Kong court of former Stand News editors Patrick Lam and Chung Pui-kuen on charges of conspiracy to publish seditious publications and called on authorities to stop using anti-state charges against journalists.
The ruling showed that Hong Kong is “descending further into authoritarianism,” CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi told AFP.
China was the world’s worst jailer of journalists, with 44 behind bars, in CPJ’s 2023 prison census. Those held include CPJ’s 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award winner Jimmy Lai, founder of the shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, who has been behind bars since 2020 and is facing life imprisonment if convicted of conspiring to collude with foreign forces.
In the United States, CPJ welcomed a Wednesday guilty verdict in the killing of Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German.
German, a veteran reporter who covered organized crime and local politics, was found stabbed to death on September 2, 2022, outside his home in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“While Wednesday’s ruling will not bring Jeff German back to his family, friends, and colleagues, the conviction sends an important message that the killing of journalists will not be tolerated,” said CPJ U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “It is vital that the murder of journalists should be taken seriously and perpetrators held accountable.”
- Reuters safety adviser killed in Ukraine
- Russia retaliates against foreign journalists covering Ukraine advance into Kursk
- China shuts down journalist’s internet, cell service
- Myanmar reporters sentenced to 20 years and life in prison
- Turkish court orders social media accounts blocked despite ruling that banned police ‘virtual patrolling’
- Syrian journalists detained without explanation, held by Turkish intelligence
- Belarusian journalist Dzmitry Luksha released following presidential pardon
CPJ and 59 other organizations called on European leaders earlier this week to suspend the Israel / EU Association Agreement, take action against the Israeli authorities’ unprecedented killing of journalists, and consider adopting targeted sanctions against IDF officials and others responsible.
The Association Agreement intends to provide an “appropriate legal and institutional framework for political dialogue and economic cooperation between the EU and Israel” and includes human rights as a core component.
The letter was sent to the EU High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, ahead of Thursday’s informal meeting of foreign ministers.
“I think the European Union has not to have taboos in order to use our toolbox, in order to make humanitarian law respected,” Borrell told media earlier today.
- Russia bans entry to 92 US journalists, lawyers, business people – Reuters
- YouTube in Africa offers a new kind of news – The Economist
- Footage shows Kenyan police fired at journalist covering protests – Eman El-Sherbiny, Bellingcat
- Silenced: How journalism became Mexico’s most dangerous profession – Christine Murray, The Financial Times
- American journalists beware: A second Trump term could pose very real risks – Joel Simon, Vanity Fair
- UN denounces Taliban morality law as ‘distressing vision’ for Afghanistan – Ayaz Gul, VOA
Do you have an Amazon Alexa-enabled device? Enable CPJ's flash briefing skill to stay up to date with the latest press freedom news from around the world.