JX Fund – European Fund for Journalism in Exile

In a letter published by Zan Times, author Margaret Atwood addresses Afghan women living under Taliban rule. Drawing parallels to her book The Handmaid’s Tale, she highlights the erosion of rights and underscores writing and solidarity as tools of resistance and dignity.

This Coda Story feature shares four powerful accounts of journalists forced into exile from Venezuela, Russia, Cuba and Afghanistan, showing how repression and censorship uproot reporters and reshape their work. Despite separation from home, they continue to report – adapting methods and confronting the personal costs of exile and resilience.

This first‑person account follows a journalist with a disability as they build an independent media project in exile, navigating barriers to access, technology and audience engagement. It highlights how physical and structural challenges intersect with repression and displacement, offering insight into resilience, innovation and inclusion among exiled media practitioners.

Journalist Alma Guillermoprieto reflects on turning conflict and upheaval into lasting narratives, drawing on decades reporting across Latin America and beyond. She speaks to the emotional terrain of covering repression, displacement and forced migration, and how deep immersion and empathy help independent and exiled journalists connect fractured moments into cohesive, meaningful journalism.

A new survey by jinn is examining how exiled media outlets are adapting their business models and monetization strategies amid recent funding challenges. Founders and managers of displaced newsrooms are invited to share their experiences.

Exiled Journalist Li Bai’an writes about the inner conflict of journalists in China, who are forced to ignore the truth under state pressure but still remember why they became journalists. She urges them to recognize that their conscience is not gone, only suppressed by fear under Xi Jinping’s rule.

In late 2025, Voices From Far Away met Basma Mostafa, an Egyptian journalist who focuses on human rights violation. In 2020 she was forced to go into exile after being arrested several times. A long journey with uncertainty, loss of identity, no home and a lot of anxiety was about to come. She is one of many exile journalists, who are facing transnational repression: The threatening of a state towards people outside of their borders.

The interview is about the lack of independent media in Azerbaijan, where most people get their news only from state television, and free newspapers have been shut down. It discusses Meydan TV, an independent Azerbaijani media outlet based in Berlin, and features Matt Kasper talking about press freedom, government repression, and the role of media operating in exile.

Transnational repression (TNR), the cross-border targeting, intimidation, and harassment of journalists and human rights defenders, is increasingly undermining press freedom and human rights in Europe and beyond. Journalists in exile often remain subjects of sustained threats, surveillance, cyber-attacks, psychological pressure, and harassment long after reaching presumed safety.

The EU’s new return policy risks jeopardising the lives of vulnerable journalists and human rights defenders living in exile. As such, it undermines the very principles of press freedom and human rights it aims to uphold and the safe haven the EU seeks to provide for journalists from all over the world threatened for reporting on the truth. ECPMF and undersigning organisations urge the EU to immediately reconsider these adverse effects and prioritise the protection of those who have already fled persecution.

With our exile expertise, we want to reveal global connections and understand what we can learn from this for free, democratic coexistence. In this episode, Azerbaijani journalist Fatima Karimova writes about the repression of media workers in her homeland and why the European Union repeatedly turns a blind eye to it.

The article features an interview with Trịnh Hữu Long, a Vietnamese journalist living in exile in Taiwan. Long explains that he has spent the past nine years introducing himself as “from Vietnam, but based in Taiwan,” where he now considers home. He co-founded and works for the independent magazines Luật Khoa and The Vietnamese.

Since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, almost every independent journalist has been exiled from Russia. For more than three years, journalists in exile have tried to continue their work from afar in a concerted effort to preserve the service of truth. Ten days ago, the Kremlin added Kostyuchenko to its list of foreign agents.

Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, has called for greater international support for Afghan journalists and media outlets, both inside the country and in exile, saying they are the primary defenders and documenters of what is happening under Taliban rule.

Ivan Kolpakov is the editor-in-chief at Meduza, the largest independent media outlet focusing on Russia. The organization has been in exile since Kolpakov co-founded the organization in 2014 with Galina Timchenko. DW Akademie spoke to the journalist and editor about what it is like to spend more than a decade reporting on his country from abroad.

Syria’s nearly 14-year-long civil war has changed shape. Though there is still fighting and instability, the political transition means many who fled are beginning to return home. Yet for Sara Kontar, a Syrian photographer who has lived in France for nearly a decade, return remains impossible.

When war broke out in Sudan in April 2023, a group of young Sudanese filmmakers were forced into exile. They also had to rethink their film. Khartoum (2025) had started out a year earlier as a collection of quiet observational sketches of ordinary lives in the capital. Now, it had to be reimagined as both the storytellers and their subjects scattered across borders.

A mission can mean many things: a diplomatic post, a military assignment, or spreading the gospel to convert nonbelievers. But journalist Ekaterina Fomina also calls her work a mission. The independent Russian reporter fled to Berlin shortly after Vladimir Putin escalated his war in February 2022. Since then, she has been reporting on Russia and Ukraine from exile.