The Afghan television anchor Beheshta Arghand has been evacuated from Afghanistan amid risks for her safety and freedom after interviewing a Taliban official live on air after the fall of Kabul in late August.
Arghand, who is now in Qatar, said she had felt trapped in a leadership that did not accept women. The Taliban limited freedom of the press to ask questions, enforced burkas to be worn on some TV stations and suspended female journalists at others
Continue reading...Women forced out of jobs despite Taliban promises to allow them to keep working, survey finds
Female journalists in Afghanistan are being forced out of jobs and told to stay at home despite Taliban promises to allow them to keep working and to respect press freedom, according to a report.
Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) says it believes fewer than 100 of Kabul’s 700 female journalists are still working and only a handful are continuing to work from home in two other Afghan provinces. Others have been attacked and harassed.
Continue reading...Reporters covering rightwing protests have been assaulted, robbed and sprayed with mace as victims say police fail to enforce the law
Los Angeles has seen volatile protests almost every weekend this summer over trans rights, political opposition to masks and vaccines, and the recall of the Democratic governor. At least seven journalists have been physically assaulted while covering these rallies, six of them by rightwing demonstrators.
Attacks on the press are just one part of escalating rightwing street violence in the city, which has included multiple stabbings, people being sprayed in the face with bear Mace, an assault on a breast cancer patient outside a clinic, and repeated physical brawls with leftwing protesters in the streets. In another sign of growing tensions, protesters rallying against vaccine mandates showed up at the homes of two Los Angeles city council members on Sunday.
Continue reading...Anti-vaccine protesters occupied the headquarters of ITV News and Channel 4 News in London on Monday afternoon, in the latest of a series of actions aimed at the media.
After marching from King’s Cross station to ITN’s headquarters on Gray's Inn Road, protesters were met by two uniformed police officers guarding the building’s revolving doors. However, they were immediately let in through an emergency exit, apparently by a supporter who was already inside the building.
Continue reading...The Guardian and other UK media demand action for those who have helped report from Afghanistan
• UK media repeat call for evacuation of Afghan colleagues
Dear prime minister and foreign secretary,
When British media organisations wrote to you earlier this month about the grave Taliban threat to Afghan journalists and translators who had worked with us, you responded almost immediately. You recognised their vital contribution to a free press by reporting on the British mission in Afghanistan and promised colleagues at risk a path to safety. President Biden did the same in the United States.
Continue reading...Malta’s attorney general formally lays charges against businessman Yorgen Fenech over journalist killing
Malta’s attorney general has called for a life sentence for the businessman Yorgen Fenech for allegedly masterminding the murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, which rocked the country four years ago.
The attorney general, Victoria Buttigieg, laid formal charges against Fenech, who was arrested in November 2019 trying to leave Malta on his yacht, accused of complicity in the murder and criminal conspiracy. He has since been undergoing a pre-trial compilation of evidence where he pleaded not guilty.
Continue reading...Nosrat Bazoft, mother of the Observer reporter executed by the tyrant in 1990, reveals for the first time how the unreported theft of a briefcase of documents on a secret Iraqi weapon may have sealed her son’s fate.
Leaning back in a loose cotton shirt within the lobby of Baghdad’s Royal Tulip Al Rasheed hotel, Farzad Bazoft looks like a man at ease. Despite investigating Iraq’s secret arms programme in the back yard of Saddam Hussein, the Observer journalist knew that the following day he would be gone, back to the safety of London.
Farzad never made it to the UK. The picture chronicles his last night of freedom. Within 24 hours he would be imprisoned in solitary confinement. Then he would be starved and beaten, the start of a chain of events that would culminate, amid international furore, with his execution at the behest of Saddam.
Continue reading...A collective of female journalists are battling to make women’s voices heard as the Islamist militants tighten their grip on the country
Despite years of development, investment and progress in the Afghan media industry, 28-year-old Zahra Joya often found she was the only woman in a newsroom. “It was a lonely space, dominated by men who made the decisions about which stories were important, and which were not,” she says.
Joya, who is from the persecuted Hazara community, felt she faced discrimination because of her ethnicity and sex. “There were so few women journalists in Kabul,” she says. “There would hardly be women reporters covering political events or press conferences even though these stories affect us greatly.”
Continue reading...A young female journalist describes the panic and fear of being forced into hiding as cities across Afghanistan fall
Two days ago I had to flee my home and life in the north of Afghanistan after the Taliban took my city. I am still on the run and there is no safe place for me to go.
Last week I was a news journalist. Today I can’t write under my own name or say where I am from or where I am. My whole life has been obliterated in just a few days.
Continue reading...U-turn over those who worked for British media follows outcry from newspapers and broadcasters
The foreign secretary has agreed to consider allowing Afghan journalists who worked for the British to flee to the UK if their lives are endangered by the resurgence of the Taliban, after an outcry from a coalition of British newspapers and broadcasters.
Dominic Raab signalled the policy U-turn on Friday, saying he recognised the bravery of the Afghan journalists. A scheme that was set up to offer a safe haven to Afghans who worked with the British will be expanded to include those who worked as journalists, it was reported.
Continue reading...Reporters from international outlets have suffered worsening intimidation while covering Henan floods
Press groups have expressed alarm at the worsening intimidation of foreign media in China, often driven by government officials and organisations.
As recovery and rescue efforts continue in Henan province after last week’s deadly floods, groups including Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) have condemned recent harassment and threats towards journalists covering the disaster.
Continue reading...The Pegasus project poses urgent questions about the privatisation of the surveillance industry and the lack of safeguards for citizens
Today, for the first time in the history of modern spying, we are seeing the faces of the victims of targeted cyber-surveillance. This is a worldwide scandal – a global web of surveillance whose scope is without precedent.
The attack is invisible. Once “infected”, your phone becomes your worst enemy. From within your pocket, it instantly betrays your secrets and delivers your private conversations, your personal photos, nearly everything about you. This surveillance has dramatic, and in some cases even life-threatening, consequences for the ordinary men and women whose numbers appear in the leak because of their work exposing the misdeeds of their rulers or defending the rights of their fellow citizens.
Continue reading...Family announces death of 64-year-old just over a week after attack in Amsterdam, reports say
The Dutch crime reporter Peter R de Vries has died just over a week after he was shot in the head in central Amsterdam, local media have reported, citing a statement released by the veteran journalist’s family.
“Peter fought to the end but was unable to win the battle,” the statement said, according to RTL Nieuws. “He died surrounded by the people who love him. Peter lived by his conviction: ‘On bended knee is no way to be free.’.”
Continue reading...Activists, protesters and journalists, including a reporter for one of Spain’s leading newspapers, reportedly in custody
Scores of Cuban activists, protesters and journalists, including a reporter for one of Spain’s leading newspapers, have reportedly been detained as Communist party security forces seek to smother Sunday’s historic flare-up of dissent.
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Americas director, said at least 140 Cubans were believed to have been detained or had disappeared in the aftermath of Cuba’s largest demonstrations in decades.
Continue reading...Government accused of ‘culpable passivity’ after dozens of journalists were attacked covering Pride protest
A Georgian TV cameraman has died after being badly beaten by far-right assailants during a protest against an LGBTQ Pride march, his station said on Sunday, as pressure mounts on authorities over attacks on journalists.
Alexander Lashkarava, a 37-year-old cameraman working for the independent station TV Pirveli, was found dead in his bed in the early hours on Sunday, the channel reported.
Continue reading...‘Tragic’ closure of Sabeen Mahmud’s community venue T2F in Karachi comes as PM Imran Khan accused of fostering censorship and intolerance
Danial Shah turned to Sabeen Mahmud, for help with his first photo exhibition when all other organisations refused to show his work. Shah’s photographs cover political and cultural issues, such as local elections and women’s rights. Some refused to work with him on political grounds, while others did not reply at all.
After a meeting at Mahmud’s community space, T2F, in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, she agreed to host his exhibition. But Mahmud, a 40-year-old human rights activist who oversaw a programme of progressive arts at T2F, did not get to see Shah’s first exhibition. She was murdered a few months after their meeting.
Continue reading...Gustavo Sánchez Cabrera shot dead Thursday, and Enrique Garcia killed Wednesday, apparently during work as ride-hail driver
Prosecutors in southern Mexico said reporter Gustavo Sánchez Cabrera was shot to death Thursday, and another journalist was killed just west of Mexico City, bring to three the number killed so far this year in the country. Two other reporters have disappeared.
The prosecutor’s office in the southern state of Oaxaca said Sánchez Cabrera was riding a motorcycle with another person on a rural road when gunmen opened fire on them.
Continue reading...Critics say US president’s realpolitik ignores Sisi regime’s ‘hostage-taking tactics’ against dissidents
“It’s a hostage negotiation and it has been all along,” said Sherif Mansour, describing the arrest of his cousin Reda Abdel-Rahman by Egyptian security forces last August as an attempt to intimidate Mansour into silence.
Abdel-Rahman has been imprisoned without trial for nine months. Mansour, an outspoken human rights advocate in Washington with the Committee to Protect Journalists, has since learned that he and his father are listed on the same charge sheet, all accused of joining a terrorist group and spreading “false news”.
Continue reading...Journalists and activists targeted in most wide-reaching crackdown since days of Soviet Union
Church bells rang in the city of Byarozawka as hundreds of mourners laid Vitold Ashurak to rest. They draped the white-red-white flag favoured by the Belarusian opposition over his body, as local police kept a wary eye on the funeral.
Sentenced to five years in prison after last year’s mass demonstrations against Alexander Lukashenko, the 50-year-old protest leader survived less than one. When Ashurak’s body was returned to his family, his head was entirely covered in bandages – only his mouth was visible, a family friend said.
Continue reading...Raman Pratasevich, seized from diverted Ryanair flight, appeared to have been beaten, says father
The father of the Belarusian journalist Raman Pratasevich said it was clear his son was acting under duress and had been beaten when he recorded a video “confessing” to organising mass protests against the regime.
Dmitry Pratasevich said Raman was “very nervous” and “spoke in a way that was unusual for him”.
Continue reading...