Category Archives: Journalist safety

‘They were smashing me with batons’: detained Belarusians tell of jail abuse

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Savage attacks by prison guards and riot police follow election protests as Lukashenko holds on to power

People detained in Belarus during the past few days of unrest have told the Guardian about systematic mistreatment and abuse, suggesting that guards and riot police loyal to Alexander Lukashenko’s regime have terrorised thousands of Belarusians caught up in the crackdown on recent protests.

Those detained in police stations, jails and makeshift prisons spoke of ritual beatings, up to 55 women being crammed into a cell meant for two people and men who were kept in stress positions for hours on end. Leaked audio files and other testimony has corroborated the reports of widespread torture as Lukashenko tries to hold on to power.

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Mexico journalist gunned down – the fifth to be killed this year

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  • Police guard also dies in shooting at restaurant in Guerrero
  • More than 120 Mexican journalists killed in 20 years

Press groups have called for justice after unidentified gunmen killed a journalist in southern Mexico, along with a police officer assigned to protect him after a 2016 attack.

Pablo Morrugares was the fifth journalist to be killed in Mexico this year, in attacks which are increasingly killing police guards assigned to the victims. More than 140 journalists have been killed over the past 20 years.

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‘Journalism has been criminalised’: Zimbabwean reporter denied bail

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Hopewell Chin’ono is in jail awaiting trial on charges he rejects of inciting violence

A prominent investigative journalist in Zimbabwe has said the struggle against corruption in the country must continue as he was sent back to prison to await trial on charges of incitement of public violence.

Hopewell Chin’ono, an internationally respected reporter, recently published documents raising concerns that powerful individuals in Zimbabwe were profiting from multimillion-dollar deals for essential supplies to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

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Russian space official accused of passing state secrets to west

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Former journalist Ivan Safronov could face up to 20 years in prison in treason case

Russian security services have opened a treason case against a former journalist who recently began working as an adviser to the head of the country’s space agency.

Ivan Safronov was arrested on Tuesday morning by agents from the FSB, the successor agency of the KGB. He could face up to 20 years in prison.

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Israeli spyware used to target Moroccan journalist, Amnesty claims

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Amnesty alleges phone of Omar Radi in Morocco was infected by NSO’s Pegasus software

As NSO Group faced mounting criticism last year that its hacking software was being used illegally against journalists, dissidents and campaigners around the world, the Israeli spyware company unveiled a new policy that it said showed its commitment to human rights.

Now an investigation has alleged that another journalist, Omar Radi in Morocco, was targeted with NSO’s Pegasus software and put under surveillance just days after the company made that promise.

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Trial of journalists to deliver ‘existential moment’ in Philippines

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Editor of news website Rappler could face prison if convicted under ‘cyber libel’ law

A verdict will be issued on Monday following the controversial trial of one of the Philippines’ most prominent journalists, in a case widely condemned as an attack on press freedom under Rodrigo Duterte.

A court in Manila will issue a verdict on Rappler, one of the country’s most influential news websites, its editor, Maria Ressa, and former researcher and writer Reynaldo Santos Jr on Monday. Ressa, who was arrested last year on charges of “cyber libel” for a story published by Rappler in 2012, has described the allegations as baseless.

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Yemeni journalist who backed independence for south is shot dead

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Nabil Hasan al-Quaety, who worked for AFP among others, targeted in his car in Aden

A Yemeni journalist has been shot dead in the southern city of Aden in an incident that is likely to inflame tensions between the government and secessionists seeking independence for the south. 

Nabil Hasan al-Quaety, a 34-year-old photographer and video journalist who worked for news organisations including Agence France-Presse, was shot in his car shortly after leaving his home on Tuesday morning. 

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Peru: at least 20 journalists died from Covid-19 as they covered pandemic

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Country is Latin America’s second worst-hit with more than 164,000 coronavirus cases and 4,500 deaths

At least 20 journalists have died from Covid-19 in Peru as reporters, photographers and camera operators raced to cover the pandemic’s spread through the country, often without protective equipment.

The number throws into sharp relief the risks and precarious work conditions which face journalists covering the global pandemic in the Andean country, which, after Brazil is Latin America’s worst-hit with more than 164,000 Covid-19 cases and 4,500 deaths.

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Bangladeshi journalist is jailed after mysterious 53-day disappearance

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Campaigners warn Shafiqul Islam Kajol faces a lengthy sentence as his family worries about his exposure to Covid-19 in prison

Fifty-three days after he disappeared, Bangladeshi journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol turned up on Sunday in police custody at a border town 150 miles from where he had last been seen.

“I am alive,” he told his son by phone, the first time the family had heard his voice since his disappearance in early March, a day after a case was filed against him and 31 others under the country’s controversial new Digital Security Act.

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Four journalists in Yemen sentenced to death for spying

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Court run by Houthi rebels orders release of six other journalists after time served

A court run by Yemen’s Houthi rebels has sentenced four journalists to death after their conviction on spying charges, their defence lawyer has said.

The four were among a group of 10 journalists who were detained by the Iran-backed rebels and accused of “collaborating with the enemy”, in reference to the Saudi-led coalition that has been at war with the Houthis since 2015, Abdel-Majeed Sabra said.

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Mexican journalist gunned down in first fatal attack of 2020

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  • María Elena Ferral shot eight times in Veracruz state
  • Attacks on reporters continue despite coronavirus pandemic

A Mexican journalist has been shot dead in broad daylight as violent crime in the country – and attacks on the press – continue amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Related: Mexico’s human rights chief draws fury for asking if journalists have been killed

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Exiled Pakistani journalist goes missing in Sweden

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Sajid Hussain, who wrote about rights abuses in Balochistan, had been granted Swedish asylum

A prominent Pakistani journalist who fled the country after receiving death threats has gone missing in Sweden where he had been granted political asylum.

Sajid Hussain, 39, went into self-imposed exile in 2012 after his reporting on forced disappearances and human rights abuses in the turbulent region of Balochistan had led to death threats. He had continued to run an online newspaper, the Balochistan Times, from abroad covering the same topics.

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Malta’s new PM has only days to prove himself, says Andrew Caruana Galizia

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Son of murdered journalist says Robert Abela is ‘continuity candidate’ and must break with ‘corrupt legacy’

Malta’s new prime minister, Robert Abela, has a few days to prove whether he will break with “the corrupt legacy” of the past, a son of the murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galiziahas said.

Abela, an outsider who beat the favourite to become leader of Malta’s ruling Labour party on Sunday, will be sworn in as the island’s 14th prime minister on Monday.

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UN special rapporteur condemns Jamal Khashoggi verdict as ‘whitewash’ – video

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Agnès Callamard, a UN special rapporteur who led an inquiry into Saudi reporter’s killing but was barred from secretive trial, says ruling that crime was spontaneous rather than premeditated means system that allowed murder to happen remains untouched.

A court exonerated Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s inner circle of involvement in the murder at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in October 2018 which plunged the kingdom into a diplomatic crisis

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Maltese minister egged before meeting about murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia – video

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Malta's justice minister, Owen Bonnici, had an egg thrown at him by a protester and was met with chants of 'shame on you' as he arrived for a meeting held to discuss the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The investigative journalist, who had exposed high-level corruption in Malta, was killed in a car bomb attack in October 2017. Amid the ensuing constitutional and political crisis, the  country's prime minister, Joseph Muscat, has promised to resign in January

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Maltese PM’s aide accused of being mastermind of Caruana Galizia killing

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Businessman Yorgen Fenech is telling police Keith Schembri was behind murder, sources say

Police investigating the murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia have questioned the prime minister’s closest aide over claims he was the mastermind behind the killing, according to sources close to the inquiry.

The allegations against Keith Schembri were made by a prominent businessman, Yorgen Fenech, who was arrested last week and is understood to be seeking legal immunity in return for his testimony.

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Businessman arrested over Maltese journalist murder released on bail

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Suspect freed as deadline for charges over death of Daphne Caruana Galizia approached

Yorgen Fenech, a prominent businessman arrested on Wednesday in connection with investigations into the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, has been released on bail, police sources said.

He will be under round-the-clock police surveillance as investigations continue.

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‘Climate of fear’: Nigeria intensifies crackdown on journalists

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Activists warn muzzling of press under President Buhari could herald return to dark days of military rule

Fisayo Soyombo was eating an evening snack in Lagos in late October when a colleague called to warn him about a plan hatched by Nigerian government officials at a clandestine meeting to arrest him.

Hours earlier, the second in a three-part undercover series by the Abuja-based investigative journalist on corruption in Nigeria’s criminal justice system had been published.

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Mexico’s human rights chief draws fury for asking if journalists have been killed

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At least 11 media workers have been murdered in the country since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office

Mexico’s new human rights commissioner has questioned if journalists are actually killed in the country, which has become a cemetery for reporters over the past two decades – and has not become any safer since the arrival of a leftwing government late last year.

After being elected commissioner on Tuesday night, Rosario Piedra Ibarra blithely responded to reporters’ questions on the murder of reporters in the country by asking, “They’ve killed journalists?”

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Outrage after Turkish journalist re-arrested a week after his release

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Detaining of Ahmet Altan, who denies alleged links to failed coup in 2016, called a ‘disgrace’

Turkish police have rearrested the journalist and novelist Ahmet Altan, just a week after his release from prison over alleged links to the failed 2016 coup.

Altan and another veteran journalist, Nazlı Ilıcak, were released on 4 November despite having been convicted of “helping a terrorist group”.

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