Asia

  
Fathimath Shehenaz holds a sign outside the Malé parliament in February, calling for justice for her brother, the blogger Ahmed Rilwan, who was abducted in 2014. (CPJ)

Maldives commission renews hope of justice for Rilwan and Rasheed

Mission Journal: With a new presidential commission investigating the abduction of Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla and the murder of Yameen Rasheed, CPJ’s Asia program research associate Aliya Iftikhar travels to Malé in late February to speak with the bloggers’ families about their pursuit of justice, and with authorities about the progress and challenges in the cases.

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The Intermediate People's Court in Tianjin, in December 2018. By law, court verdicts should be posted online, but in reality few rulings are made public. (Reuters/Thomas Peter)

How many journalists are jailed in China? Censorship means we don’t know

Reporting on China’s harassment of journalists has never been easy. Lately it’s been getting much harder, which suggests that conditions for the press could be worsening. At least 47 journalists were jailed in China at the time of CPJ’s 2018 prison census and I am investigating at least a dozen other cases, but the details…

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On International Women’s Day, CPJ highlights jailed female journalists

On International Women’s Day, CPJ has highlighted the cases of female journalists jailed around the world in retaliation for their work. At least 33 of the 251 journalists in jail at the time of CPJ’s prison census are women. At least one of those–Turkish reporter and artist Zehra Dogan–was released in February after serving a…

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Voters line up at a polling station in Sukma in Chhattisgarh state on November 12, 2018. The state's newly elected state minister is setting up a committee to draft a journalist safety law. (AFP)

Chhattisgarh’s plan for journalist safety law could be template for all India

Every day for two years, freelance journalist Santosh Yadav must walk the 50 or so yards from his home to the Darbha village police station in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, to sign a register. Just one missed day could immediately land him back in prison as he awaits trial on anti-terror charges. A police commander said that…

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Visitors look at CCTV cameras at the Security China 2018 exhibition on public safety and security in Beijing on October 24, 2018. In a 2018 survey, foreign correspondents in China listed surveillance as their top concern. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Surveillance tops foreign correspondents’ concerns in China, FCCC finds

Working conditions for foreign correspondents in China further deteriorated in 2018, according to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China annual survey. The report, “Under Watch: FCCC Annual Working Conditions Report 2018,” highlights growing digital and human surveillance, as well as government interference in reporting in China.

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CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon talks about global press freedom violations during a Press Behind Bars panel at the U.N. (Reuters)

CPJ’s Joel Simon speaks at Press Behind Bars panel

Committee to Protect Journalists Executive Director Joel Simon addressed a panel event at the 73rd session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 28, 2018. The event highlighted global press freedom violations and the jailing of journalists in countries around the world, with a specific focus on cases in Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh,…

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Live Stream – Press Behind Bars: Undermining Justice and Democracy

Event scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. EDT on Friday, September 28, 2018. Committee to Protect Journalists Executive Director Joel Simon, Reuters President and CPJ board member Stephen J. Adler, and human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, who represents the imprisoned Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, speak on a panel at the 73rd…

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Google's logo is seen outside its office in Beijing. If the company were to launch a censored news app in China, it would send a message to other companies and other countries that trading press freedom principles for access to lucrative markets is acceptable. (Reuters/Thomas Peter)

Google complicity in Chinese censorship could endanger press freedom elsewhere

In 2010, after four years of offering Chinese users a heavily censored version of its search engine, Google decided it would no longer block search results at the request of the Chinese state. “Our objection is to those forces of totalitarianism,” Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, told The New York Times at the time, adding that…

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President Yameen, center, surrounded by his body guards in the capital, Malé, in February 2018. The president was criticized today for comments he made about missing Maldives journalist Rilwan. (AP/Mohamed Sharuhaan/File)

Maldives president’s off-hand comment on missing journalist Rilwan highlights need for fresh investigation

Four years to the day that Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla was last seen by his family, President Abdulla Yameen Abdulla Gayoom declared the Maldives journalist dead.

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A man reads a newspaper while walking through a market in Hong Kong in May 2018. The Hong Kong Journalists Association says press freedom in the administrative region is in decline. (AFP/Anthony Wallace)

Hong Kong Journalists Association finds press freedom further restricted by ‘one country’ principle

In its annual report, released July 29, the Hong Kong Journalists Association found that press freedom has gone backward as the administrative region seeks to implement legislation to criminalize critical opinions toward China’s “one country” policy and Beijing.

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