Committee to Protect Journalists

Nov

2023

Burkina Faso junta’s conscription of critics rattles civil society and unions

BURKINA Faso's military junta is abusing an emergency law to conscript perceived dissidents and critics to join a deadly fight against militants linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State, warned lawyers, journalists and watchdog Human Rights Watch this week. In a series of statements, civil society groups and unions for journalists and lawyers accused the junta of seeking to silence peaceful dissent as it struggled to contain the security crisis as promised when it seized power in a September 2022 coup. "We see that it (the junta) is revealing its true face and that it has not necessarily come to…

Dec

2022

By The African Mirror

Journalist imprisonments reach 30-year high

WORLD

THE number of journalists imprisoned worldwide is the highest ever recorded in the 30 years that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has produced its prison census, the organization said Wednesday. A record 363 journalists were behind bars as of December 1, 2022, a 20% increase over 2021, CPJ’s annual prison census showed. Iran has soared to become the world’s worst jailer of journalists, with 62 imprisoned on December 1, rising from tenth place in 2021, a reflection of authorities’ ruthless crackdown on the women-led uprisings that erupted in September. The regime has imprisoned a record number of female journalists—22 out of…

Dec

2020

By The African Mirror

Record number of journalists imprisoned in 2020 – report

MEDIA FREEDOM

A record number of journalists were imprisoned during 2020, as governments cracked down on coverage of the coronavirus pandemic or tried to suppress reporting of civil unrest, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has announced. At least 274 journalists were in jail as of December 1, the most since the New York-based group began collecting data in the early 1990s, the report said, up from at least 250 last year. Protests and political tensions were the cause of many arrests, with the most made in China, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, it said. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, authoritarian leaders tried…