Category Archives: Journalist safety

‘I write what they tell me to’: Iran’s crackdown on journalists intensifies

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Independent media and human rights groups report arrests and physical assault as authorities try to suppress news of protests

As nationwide protests enter their fourth week in Iran, the government is increasing its crackdown on activists and journalists. On 22 September Niloofar Hamedi, an Iranian journalist, was arrested after posting a picture she took of the parents of Mahsa Amini hugging each other in a Tehran hospital on the day of their daughter’s death.

Amini, 22, died in police custody on 16 September after she was arrested for not wearing her hijab properly, which sparked the protests that then spread across the country.

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Two brothers jailed after admitting murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia

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George and Alfred Degiorgio both given 40-year sentences for killing of Maltese journalist in 2017 car bombing

Two brothers charged with the car-bomb assassination of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia have both been sentenced to 40 years in prison, after dramatically pleading guilty to her murder on the first day of their trial.

Caruana Galizia, who had investigated political corruption in the European Union’s smallest member state, died in an explosion that destroyed her car as she drove away from home on 16 October 2017.

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BBC accused of endangering World Service Vietnamese staff

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Cost-cutting plan to move staff from London to Bangkok will put them at risk of abduction, reporters say

Journalists at the BBC World Service have said plans to move its Vietnamese service from London to Thailand pose a danger to press freedom.

Several reporters at the World Service raised concerns that the Vietnamese state had a history of abducting journalists from Thailand. They also suggested that BBC bosses failed to comprehend that just because both countries were in south-east Asia, it did not mean Vietnamese people were naturally at home in Thailand.

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Two Haitian journalists killed while reporting in slum controlled by gangs

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Tayson Latigue and Frantzsen Charles were among seven journalists who came under attack on Sunday

Two Haitian reporters have been shot dead and their bodies set on fire while reporting in a slum controlled by gangs in the capital, in the second such killing this year.

Tayson Latigue and Frantzsen Charles were among seven journalists who came under attack on Sunday in the Cité Soleil district of Port-au-Prince. They were investigating worsening violence in the area, including the recent killing of a 17-year-old girl, according to a statement from Haiti’s Association of Independent Journalists.

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Italian journalist Mattia Sorbi wounded near frontline in Ukraine

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Correspondent ‘well looked after’ in hospital, says Italian foreign ministry, after car reportedly drove over mine

An Italian journalist has been wounded, and his driver reportedly killed, close to the frontline between Ukrainian and Russian forces in the Kherson region.

Mattia Sorbi, a freelance correspondent who has worked for several Italian outlets, was taken to hospital in Russian-occupied territory after the car in which he was travelling reportedly drove over a mine several days ago.

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Hong Kong journalist union chair arrested weeks before Oxford fellowship

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Ronson Chan was preparing for stint in UK before being arrested for allegedly obstructing a police officer

The head of Hong Kong’s journalist union has been arrested, weeks before he was due to leave for an overseas fellowship at Oxford University.

Ronson Chan, the chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), was arrested for allegedly obstructing a police officer and disorderly conduct in a public place.

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US senator rejects Israeli army report on killing of Palestinian American reporter

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Chris Van Hollen calls for independent US inquiry, saying IDF claim Shireen Abu Aqleh died amid gun battle unsupported by evidence

A US senator has dismissed an Israeli army report that claims a soldier accidentally killed the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh in the midst of a gun battle, saying it is unsupported by the evidence.

Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator for Maryland, repeated his call for an independent US investigation into Abu Aqleh’s killing in the West Bank in May, saying that the United Nations and reconstructions by major news outlets found that the Al Jazeera television journalist was not in the immediate vicinity of fighting with Palestinian militants and could not have been caught in the crossfire.

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Sudan journalists defy military rule by forming first union in 30 years

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‘Historic’ move sees media professionals claim rights after years of persecution under Omar al-Bashir and crackdown after 2021 coup

Sudanese journalists have formed the country’s first independent union in more than three decades.

Abdulmoniem Abu Idrees, 58, Khartoum correspondent for the Agence France-Presse news agency, was elected the union’s first president in a vote on Sunday.

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Mexico: journalist in Guerrero becomes 15th media worker killed in 2022

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Fredid Román, who ran an online outlet focused on state-level politics, gunned down in his car in state capital

A local journalist who ran an online news program has been shot to death in southern Mexico, making him the 15th media worker killed so far this year nationwide.

Prosecutors in the southern state of Guerrero said on Monday that Fredid Román was gunned down in the state capital, Chilpancingo.

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Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai to plead not guilty in national security case

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Democracy activist and Apple Daily founder will stand trial without jury and could face up to life in prison

The founder of Apple Daily, Jimmy Lai, will stand trial without a jury in Hong Kong, after he told a court he would plead not guilty to national security charges.

On Monday, prosecutors told a case management hearing that Lai would challenge the accusations but six fellow executives and manager from the now-defunct Apple Daily or its parent company, Next Digital, intended to plead guilty.

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Journalist found dead in northern Mexico in bloody year for media

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Body of Juan Arjón López, 14th journalist to be killed in Mexico in 2022, identified by tattoos in border city of San Luis Río Colorado

An independent journalist has been found dead in northern Mexico, bringing to 14 the number of reporters and media workers killed so far this year, which has been one of the deadliest ever for the profession.

Prosecutors in the northern border state of Sonora said on Tuesday that tattoos on a body found in the border city of San Luis Río Colorado matched those of journalist Juan Arjón López.

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Biden: US knows ‘with certainty’ Syria holding missing journalist Austin Tice

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President urges regime, which denies involvement, to release Tice, who disappeared in 2012 covering Syrian war

Joe Biden has said that the US knows “with certainty” that the Syrian government is holding Austin Tice – an American journalist who has been missing for a decade – and called on Damascus to release him.

Ten years after the freelance reporter disappeared while reporting on the Syrian war, Biden said the US government knows “that [Tice] has been held by the Syrian regime”.

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Family of captured Ukrainian human rights activist plead for help

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Campaign launched to highlight plight of Maksym Butkevych amid fears he is being singled out over ties to UK

Family and friends of a prominent Ukrainian human rights activist who signed up to fight Russia and was captured have launched a public campaign to highlight his plight over fears he is being wrongly accused of being a “British spy” due to his ties to the UK.

Maksym Butkevych, 45, a former BBC Ukrainian service producer who studied at Sussex University and who sits on the board of Amnesty International’s Ukraine section, is well known as a human rights defender due to his work with refugees in Ukraine.

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Shireen Abu Aqleh: family of killed journalist demand meeting with Biden

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Letter to president expresses ‘sense of betrayal’ for shielding Israel from accountability for her death ahead of his visit to Jerusalem

The family of Shireen Abu Aqleh, the renowned Palestinian-American journalist killed during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank, is demanding a meeting with President Biden during his visit to Jerusalem this week after accusing his administration of shielding Israel from accountability for her death.

Abu Aqleh’s brother, Anton, wrote to Biden on Friday expressing his family’s “grief, outrage and sense of betrayal” after the US state department concluded that Israeli forces were “likely responsible” for shooting the Al Jazeera reporter in the head in the West Bank city of Jenin in May but “found no reason to believe that this was intentional”.

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Daphne Caruana Galizia: suspect confesses to killing Maltese journalist

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George Degiorgio says he would have asked for bigger payment for murder had he known more about victim

One of the men accused of detonating the car bomb that killed the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has confessed to the crime and said he would have asked for a bigger fee for the murder had he known more about her.

George Degiorgio, who along with his brother Alfred and an associate, Vince Muscat, has been charged with murdering Caruana Galizia in Malta in October 2017, also said he would implicate others in the plot to kill her.

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Shireen Abu Aqleh: Israeli gunfire probably killed journalist, say US investigators

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But forensic analysis of bullet that killed Palestinian-American journalist found to be inconclusive

US investigators believe Israeli army gunfire probably killed the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, although a forensic analysis of the bullet was inconclusive.

A statement released by the State Department spokesperson Ned Price said “detailed forensic analysis, independent, third-party examiners … could not reach a definitive conclusion regarding the origin of the bullet”, which was badly damaged.

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Fresh row as Israel to conduct forensic tests on bullet that killed Shireen Abu Aqleh

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Dispute threatens to derail apparent breakthrough in standoff over investigation into Al Jazeera reporter’s death

Israel has said it will conduct forensic tests on the bullet that killed the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, a day after Palestinian officials handed over the evidence to a US security coordinator for examination on what they said was the condition that Israel would not be involved.

The testing will be carried out by Israeli investigators in the presence of US observers, the Israeli military spokesperson Brig-Gen Ran Kochav told Army Radio on Sunday.

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Reporter shot to death in Mexico, the 12th journalist killed there this year

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Attacks on the press have increased 85% in the three years since president Andrés Manuel López Obrador took power

Yet another Mexican reporter has been shot to death, bringing to 12 the number of journalists killed this year in the country, one of the world’s most dangerous for media workers.

Antonio de la Cruz, 47, was shot on Wednesday as he was leaving his house with his 23-year-old daughter, who was seriously injured, according to state prosecutors and the newspaper that employed him.

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Delhi police arrest Muslim journalist Mohammed Zubair over tweet from 2018

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Journalists demand release of co-founder of Alt News after he was accused of insulting Hindus

The co-founder of a factchecking website has been arrested by police in Delhi weeks after he highlighted derogatory comments made by a spokesperson for Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) about the prophet Muhammad.

Mohammed Zubair, who set up the Alt News website, flagged the remarks made during a television debate at the end of May on Twitter, bringing them attention they may not otherwise have had.

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Russian editor auctions Nobel medal to raise money for Ukraine refugees

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Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov will sell 23-carat gold medal in US on Monday, donating proceeds to charity

The editor of the Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta is auctioning his Nobel peace prize medal, with the proceeds to go to helping children displaced by the war in Ukraine.

Dmitry Muratov led one of the last major independent media outlets critical of Vladimir Putin’s government after others either closed or had their websites blocked after the invasion of Ukraine. In March, Novaya Gazeta announced it was suspending operations for the duration of the war after it became a crime to report anything on the conflict that veered from the government line.

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