JOURNALISTS IMPRISONED WORLDWIDE REACH NEW HIGHS

Iranian journalists Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi was arrested by regime, with propaganda against the state and conspiring against national security.

Wed 14 December 2022:

According to an annual tally by the press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders, the number of journalists imprisoned around the world has reached a new high (Reporters Sans Frontieres, or RSF).

In 2022, there were 533 media practitioners in prison, an increase from 488 the previous year, according to the RSF’s Annual Press Freedom Review, which was released on Wednesday.

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“More than a quarter of them were imprisoned during the year,” said the Paris-based watchdog which has been publishing the annual tally since 1995.

More than half are jailed in just five countries: China, which remains “the world’s biggest jailer of journalists” with 110, followed by Myanmar (62), Iran (47), Vietnam (39) and Belarus (31).

According to the organization, Iran’s protest crackdown has contributed to a record number of journalists being imprisoned worldwide.

34 of the 47 journalists currently imprisoned in Iran have been arrested since September, when protests erupted over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who was arrested for violating the country’s strict dress code.

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Iran is one of the three nations with the most media prisoners, along with China and Myanmar, and is the only one that wasn’t on the list last year.

According to the RSF, China has the most media professionals imprisoned. 110 media personnel are being held there, including in Hong Kong.

Since the military takeover in 2021, journalism in Myanmar has become “effectively a criminal offence,” according to the RSF, with 62 journalists being detained.

In Russia, where independent media is virtually outlawed, 18 journalists are being detained, eight of whom are Ukrainian.

“Dictatorial and authoritarian regimes are filling their prisons faster than ever by jailing journalists,” said Christophe Deloire, RSF secretary-general, in a statement.

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Only a little more than one-third of the imprisoned media workers across the world have been convicted. The remaining two-thirds are in prison without trial.

“Some of them have been waiting for their trial for more than 20 years,” the RSF said.

Fifty-seven journalists were killed, due in part to the war in Ukraine, up from 48 and 50 in the last two years respectively.

Eight journalists have been killed reporting on the war, five of them from non-combatant countries.

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The RSF said nearly 80 percent of media professionals killed around the world in 2022 were “deliberately targeted in connection with their work or the stories they were covering”, such as organised crime and corruption cases.

Deloire said the new record “confirms the pressing and urgent need to resist these unscrupulous governments and to extend our active solidarity to all those who embody the ideal of journalistic freedom, independence and pluralism”.