JX Fund – European Fund for Journalism in Exile

Journalists from countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iran have found a place to work in Istanbul. At a meeting, they talk about the opportunities and risks.

Investigative journalists in Africa have to bear many blows — from repressive governments, corporations trying to silence them, travel and visa restrictions, physical attacks, lawsuits such as SLAPPs, limited funding, and skill and training gaps. Still, they have found ways to overcome those challenges.

The personal and painful reality of life under surveillance is documented in a new film that follows an independent Cuban journalist’s flight into exile. After tough questioning by Cuban police, Abraham Jimenez Enoa relates his ordeal on camera.

Since the presidential campaigns started, at least eight journalists were imprisoned in Venezuela — an intimidation tactic that makes investigative reporting harder for independent news outlets.

Forced into exile, independent media outlet Frontier Myanmar has adapted to survive. By focusing on niche audiences and diversifying revenue streams with a membership model, data agency, and co-working space, the media outlet thrives despite challenges.

Since the Taliban takeover in 2021, detentions, imprisonments, and torture of journalists have surged, creating a “shadow of restriction and oppression” over press freedom in Afghanistan. Recently the Taliban have ordered TV channels in parts of Afghanistan to cease broadcasting images of living beings, after already banning music and female faces on screen.

The Kyrgyz state is increasingly cracking down on press freedom: One example is the case of an investigative journalist who was expelled from Kyrgyzstan due to his work against corruption. The journalist in exile calls on the international community to take action against the suppression of press freedom in Kyrgyzstan.

After 813 days in solitary confinement, Guatemalan journalist Jose Ruben Zamora returns home, committed to exposing corruption despite heavy repression. In this interview, Zamora discusses the ongoing threats to press freedom under Guatemala’s authoritarian regime and his determination to continue the fight.

The Taliban have aggressively targeted media freedom and journalists over the past three years. They have banned photography and filming, mandated pro-Taliban reporting, used violence against journalists and media staff, carried out arrests, imposed severe censorship, threatened to shut down media institutions, and exploited journalists’ vulnerable status.

Iran stands as one of the most dangerous places for reporters, ranked among the top ten jailers of journalists globally. The government targets those who report on human rights violations, protests, or any government abuses, subjecting them to intimidation, arbitrary arrest, and violence.

In the lead up to the Georgian national elections on 26 October 2024, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and nine partner organisations in the Council of Europe’s Platform for the Safety of Journalists published the following report and recommendations to ensure the safety of journalists and the right to reliable information.

Local press freedom organizations in Sri Lanka have documented 44 cases of murdered and disappeared journalists and media workers between 2004 and 2010. To date, no one has been convicted for the crimes committed against individual journalists or entire newsrooms.

Finding revenue, repelling attacks and protecting sources: Media leaders from Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Belarus and El Salvador open up about leading organisations that report on their countries from afar.

Social media platform X has blocked access to over 100 accounts belonging to Turkish journalists, activists and media organizations run by journalists living in exile, in another example of its compliance with censorship requests from the Turkish government.

A general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has been charged in New York in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate a dissident Iranian American journalist. The target of the alleged assassination plot was not named in unsealed court documents, but she has been widely identified as Masih Alinejad, who lives in New York.

In a new documentary four Afghan women – former parliamentarians, a past minister and a journalist — who fled their homeland after the Taliban-takeover of in August 2021, spotlight the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan. “An Unfinished Journey” captures their resilience in exile as they advocate for women’s rights and strive to keep Afghanistan’s plight in global discussions.

Press freedom is severely restricted in many countries, prompting journalists like Amir Aman Kiyaro from Ethiopia and Vania Pigeonutt from Mexico to seek refuge in Germany. Facing threats, violence, and imprisonment, they now focus on raising awareness about the crises in their home countries and the psychological impacts of their work.

In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where news reporting has been transformed from a process of awakening and raising awareness—crucial for the development of critical knowledge in society—into a dreary, unbearable exercise in censorship and propaganda, the only hope for citizens lies in social networks and media outlets that reject the Taliban’s order and operate from outside the country.