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At least 26 governments have targeted journalists abroad, according to Freedom House, which has identified 112 incidents against journalists from 2014 to 2023, including assault, detention, unlawful deportation, rendition, and assassination. For some journalists, leaving the country might not always guarantee safety.
Threats, repression, conflict, and unrest: across the world, these and other factors are pushing journalists into exile in record numbers. In a striking development, exiled or soon-to-be exiled journalists now make up more than half of the people CPJ assists. While exile is a global issue, three countries — Russia, Iran, and Afghanistan — stand out as places from which journalists flee only to face further insecurity. Below, find case studies on each country.
The 2024 Digital News Report Reuters Institute reveals new findings about the consumption of online news globally. It is based on a YouGov survey of more than 95,000 people in 47 countries representing half of the world’s population. The report looks at the growing importance of platforms in news consumption and production, including more visual and video-led social media such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
On the only radio station in the remote Ecuadorian town of Baeza, morning show host Juan Carlos Tito updates listeners on the weather, recent power outages, and repairs to a bridge spanning a nearby river. For the last 24 years, Tito, 53, has been the trusted voice of Radio Selva, broadcasting important community news to this town of 2,000 in the Andean highlands. But now, Tito’s voice is beamed into Baeza from abroad.
Ethiopian journalist Belete Kassa fled the country after his colleague Belaye Manaye was detained in a desert military camp. As crackdowns on the press escalate, dozens of Ethiopian journalists face exile, harassment, and threats.
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?
After the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022 and since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the legal basis for the Russian state’s digital surveillance of opposition and anti-Kremlin citizens has been expanded. This report presents a chronological list of legal restrictions on internet freedom due to expanded surveillance measures and describes the technical implementation of surveillance.
The legal basis for combating independent media and media professionals in Russia emerged in the 2010s. In the 2020s, the state significantly expanded its options for repression. Media outlets and individuals were declared foreign agents and the number of cases against media professionals based on extremism paragraphs increased. This report provides an overview of the latest developments.
According to a survey of Russian media professionals in exile, most of them do not live in the EU but in other countries (Georgia, Armenia, Central Asia, Serbia, etc.) despite the high risks due to a lack of legal options and insufficient financial resources. On behalf of RSF, the Russian human rights organization Mass Media Defence Center has prepared an analysis of the situation of independent journalists from Russia in exile.
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.
A new report just published from the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) shows that most “OECD DAC members are aware of the importance of the integrity of information environments to achieve their development and foreign policy objectives, and of the central role played by public interest media”. But even as autocratisation has risen, disinformation has surged and the financial threats confronting independent media have become existential, they have with just a few exceptions proved unable to increase their support for the sector.
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.