In record year, China, Israel, and Myanmar are world’s leading jailers of journalists

[Miss Zomboko]

China, Israel, and Myanmar emerged as the world’s three worst offenders in another record-setting year for journalists jailed because of their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2024 prison census has found. Belarus and Russia rounded out the top five, with CPJ documenting its second-highest number of journalists behind bars – a global total of at least 361 journalists incarcerated on December 1, 2024.

While that number falls slightly below the global record set in 2022, when at least 370 journalists were imprisoned in connection with their work, CPJ recorded unprecedented totals in several countries including China, Israel, Tunisia, and Azerbaijan. The primary drivers of journalist imprisonment in 2024 – a year that saw more than 100 new jailings – were ongoing authoritarian repression (China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Belarus, Russia), war (Israel, Russia), and political or economic instability (Egypt, Nicaragua, Bangladesh).

China, Myanmar, Belarus, and Russia routinely rank among the top jailers of journalists. Israel, a multiparty parliamentary democracy that rarely appeared in CPJ’s annual prison census before the 2023 start of the war in Gaza, catapulted to second-place last year as it tried to silence coverage from the occupied Palestinian territories.

Yet while circumstances varied from region to region and country to country, all jailers followed a dispiritingly similar tactical playbook.

Across the globe, authorities in multiple countries routinely violated due process procedures, including arbitrarily detaining members of the media even after they’d served their sentences or unjustly holding them for extensive periods without trial.

Egypt used enforced disappearances – a crime under international law – to intimidate and silence journalists before formally detaining them and violated its own criminal procedure law with a two-year extension of the incarceration of Egyptian-British blogger Alaa Abdelfattah, who should have been released in September. In Saudi Arabia, cartoonist Mohammed al-Ghamdi (Al-Hazza) was sentenced to 23 years as he was preparing to leave prison after serving his original six-year sentence. In China, it remains unclear whether five of the seven Uyghur students arrested with scholar and blogger Ilham Tohti were released when the last of them completed their sentences more than two years ago.

 

[dudus]

Kwa Israel wako sahihi; wengi ni magaidi wamejipenyeza kwa mgongo wa journalists kipindi hiki cha vita.

 

[MOTOCHINI]

Kwa Israel wako sahihi; wengi ni magaidi wamejipenyeza kwa mgongo wa journalists kipindi hiki cha vita.

Akili zakushikiliwa
Akili za Kitumwa

 

[John Wickzer Mulholland]

China, Israel, and Myanmar emerged as the world’s three worst offenders in another record-setting year for journalists jailed because of their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2024 prison census has found. Belarus and Russia rounded out the top five, with CPJ documenting its second-highest number of journalists behind bars – a global total of at least 361 journalists incarcerated on December 1, 2024.

While that number falls slightly below the global record set in 2022, when at least 370 journalists were imprisoned in connection with their work, CPJ recorded unprecedented totals in several countries including China, Israel, Tunisia, and Azerbaijan. The primary drivers of journalist imprisonment in 2024 – a year that saw more than 100 new jailings – were ongoing authoritarian repression (China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Belarus, Russia), war (Israel, Russia), and political or economic instability (Egypt, Nicaragua, Bangladesh).

China, Myanmar, Belarus, and Russia routinely rank among the top jailers of journalists. Israel, a multiparty parliamentary democracy that rarely appeared in CPJ’s annual prison census before the 2023 start of the war in Gaza, catapulted to second-place last year as it tried to silence coverage from the occupied Palestinian territories.

Yet while circumstances varied from region to region and country to country, all jailers followed a dispiritingly similar tactical playbook.

Across the globe, authorities in multiple countries routinely violated due process procedures, including arbitrarily detaining members of the media even after they’d served their sentences or unjustly holding them for extensive periods without trial.

Egypt used enforced disappearances – a crime under international law – to intimidate and silence journalists before formally detaining them and violated its own criminal procedure law with a two-year extension of the incarceration of Egyptian-British blogger Alaa Abdelfattah, who should have been released in September. In Saudi Arabia, cartoonist Mohammed al-Ghamdi (Al-Hazza) was sentenced to 23 years as he was preparing to leave prison after serving his original six-year sentence. In China, it remains unclear whether five of the seven Uyghur students arrested with scholar and blogger Ilham Tohti were released when the last of them completed their sentences more than two years ago.

Nchi zenye tawala za kidhalimu, Udikteta na zenye mrengo wa siasa za Kikomunisti/Ujamaa lazima zitakuwa zinaongoza kwenye masuala ya kishenzi kama haya, Wala hata haishangazi. Ningeshangaa sana endapo kama nchi hizi zingekosekana kwenye orodha hii. Hizi hizi ndiyo nchi zinazoongoza kwa balaa la kuwanyonga na kuwaua Watu/Wananchi wengi ambao wanaikosoa Serikali zao. Kwa sasa China ndiyo inaonekana kuongoza duniani ktk kuwanyonga Watu wengi zaidi, tena nje ya Mfumo wa Mahakama.

 

[Numbisa]

Inasikitisha sana

 

[John Wickzer Mulholland]

Kwa Israel wako sahihi; wengi ni magaidi wamejipenyeza kwa mgongo wa journalists kipindi hiki cha vita.

Akili zakushikiliwa
Akili za Kitumwa

Kuna Ukweli mchungu kuhusiana na suala hili, kwa kiasi kikubwa Sana Israel kuna Utawala wa Kidemokrasia unaozingatia Sheria, unlike kwenye hizi nchi zingine zilizotajwa kwenye orodha hii.