JX Fund – European Fund for Journalism in Exile

The Iranian diaspora is hopelessly divided. The historian and political scientist Arash Azizi on the failure of the protests, the influence from exile and dealing with reformers.

Moscow’s Dorogomilovsky District Court arrested in absentia TV Rain journalist and former IStories employee Ekaterina Fomina and IStories’ editor-in-chief Roman Anin. The journalists are accused of spreading so-called “fakes” about the Russian army with the motive of political hatred.

In recent years, Germany has become a place of refuge for hundreds of journalists who have had to flee their home countries. Many now continue to work from here and try to improve conditions in their countries of origin. Can they succeed?

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and its local partner, the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) warn that Syria, ranked 179/180 on the world press freedom index, remains as dangerous as ever for news professionals and calls for the protection of Syrian journalists in exile.

Russian exiled media and activists held a telethon  in support of the growing number of political prisoners inside Russia, raising tens of thousands of euros for those currently held behind bars.

Valera Ilinov, the founder of the leading independent media outlet covering the republic of Komi, sees his work as inherently political and decolonial. Last month, the 24-year-old founder of Komi’s flagship independent news outlet Komi Daily was fined for violating Russia’s censorship laws twice in one week.

In Nicaragua, journalism has been persecuted, censored, and criminalized by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo since 2018. By 2022, several journalists were in jail for practicing their profession, many of them had been assaulted by the Police and regime sympathizers, and three independent media outlets—La Prensa, CONFIDENCIAL, and 100% Noticias—had been closed and confiscated, and dozens of journalists had gone into exile to avoid prison.

In the investigative journalist Elena Kostyuchenko’s new book about Russia, resistance is carried out through small, discreet acts.

Thousands of journalists around the world have had to seek exile in other countries in recent years amidst rising political repression, an independent United Nations investigator, Irene Khan, told the global body’s General Assembly in a report last week. Ms Khan’s findings shine a worrying light on the state of the world that all countries, especially democracies, need to reflect on and address.

Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca, a Cuban independent journalist who had been imprisoned in Cuba since 2021 because of his reporting, was released Wednesday on the condition that he leave the island for exile in the United States.

Since 1993, Eritrea’s regime has suppressed media and freedom of expression. Exiled journalists defy censorship to inform their fellow citizens and keep independent reporting alive. IJNet puts some of them in the spotlight.

YouTube remains the only major US-based social media platform available in Russia. It’s become “indispensable” to everyday people, making a ban tricky. Journalists and dissidents are taking advantage.

Following last year’s joint investigation into the use of NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware against Galina Timchenko, co-founder, CEO, and publisher of Meduza, Access Now, the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto (“the Citizen Lab”), and independent digital security expert Nikolai Kvantiliani have uncovered how at least seven more Russian, Belarusian, Latvian, and Israeli journalists and activists have been targeted with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware within the EU.

At least seven journalists and activists who have been vocal critics of the Kremlin and its allies have been targeted inside the EU by a state using Pegasus, the hacking spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group, according to a new report by security researchers.

From Russia to Sudan, rising authoritarianism and threats to press freedom are driving a growing number of journalists to flee their home countries and try to resume their work from abroad. Media organizations in democratic countries have a collective duty to support them.

“I consider this label repressive. But I can say for sure that we will continue to work, whatever they call us,” says Daria Poryadina, editor of the exile-Russian news outlet SOTA, that got declared an ‘undesirable organization’ by Russia’s Prosecutor General on May 16.

A large-scale surveillance program covertly operated by the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s intelligence arm has been targeting critical and independent journalists living in exile in Europe, the United States and Canada, as revealed by confidential documents obtained by Nordic Monitor.

“Journalism done from exile remains the last reserve of all our freedoms.” Carlos Fernando Chamorro received the Golden Pen of Freedom during the 75th WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress – read his acceptance speech.