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“When they came for me, I felt relieved.”

  • Hanna Hanchar
  • Belsat

Larysa Shchyrakova from Homiel worked at Belsat almost from the very beginning, since 2008. The journalist did not have a quiet life even before 2020, but after the protests and mass repressions began, life turned into a waiting game — when will they come for her? Larysa says that when they really came, she exhaled, because she could no longer be afraid.

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How Exile Changes Your Life Forever

  • Voices From Far Away

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.

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Meydan TV: Exiled Media Outlet based in Berlin

  • Menschen Machen Medien
  • Danilo Höpfner

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.

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ResidentBat: A New Spyware Family Used by Belarusian KGB

  • RSF

This report introduces the previously unknown Spyware ResidentBat used by the Belarussian KGB (secret service) – It targets Android phones and is installed through physical device access. Broad application permissions and an accessibility service allow the app access to a wide range of data, spanning phone calls, SMS, encrypted messenger chats and files on the phone.

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Exiled Journalists Report on Legal Violations in Turkey

  • International Journalists
  • Eşe Karaduman

On the occasion of International Human Rights Day, the Freedom Convention Turkey 2025 took place at the National Press Club in Washington. Organized by Advocates of Silenced Turkey (AST) under the slogan “Turkey at a Crossroads: Democracy and Justice,” the event brought together victims of state violence, dismissed academics, exiled journalists, human rights defenders, and civil society actors.

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‘We’ve Seen This Before’: Lessons for the Press on Authoritarianism

  • PEN America
  • Julia Goldberg

Weaponizing the law to silence journalists, turning reporters into public enemies, and cutting off access to information are all tactics familiar to four journalists — Pethő, M. Gessen, Ramón Zamora, and Sevgi Akarçeşme — who gathered at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY to discuss their experiences witnessing the rise of global authoritarian regimes and the warning signs they’re watching emerge in the United States.

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Azerbaijan: The Price of Victory and the Silence of Dissent

  • Correctiv
  • Fatima Karimova

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.

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Iranian Intelligence Expands Spy Network in Germany

  • Iran International

Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence is intensifying efforts to recruit dissidents in Germany as informants by blackmailing their relatives back home, according to an investigation by the Die Welt newspaper. The report details the chain of events and techniques agents use through social media and messaging platforms like WhatsApp to turn exiles into “disposable informants” in espionage parlance.

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Independent Media in Post-Assad Syria: A New Chapter Begins

  • IMS
  • Lilas Hatahet

On 8 December 2024, the fall of the Assad regime transformed Syria’s media landscape. Freedom of speech became tangible. Long-silenced testimonies resurfaced, hidden documents emerged, and once-impossible conversations now fill independent media – but dwindling funding poses new challenges.

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Building a Pro-Democracy Media for Vietnam in Exile

  • New Bloom
  • Brian Hioe

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.

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The Price of Speaking Out in Nicaragua

  • Confidencial
  • Gabriela Selser

“I have nowhere to live, I chose words,” says Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli in one of her recent verses of pain and exile. Lines that undoubtedly summarize the condition of hundreds of journalists, writers, and artists who over the last seven years have been forced to leave their country, Nicaragua, because of their commitment to freedom.

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Vietnamese Government Sues Berlin-Based Exiled Journalists

  • Deutschlandfunk
  • Sebastian Engelbrecht

This episode of the mediares podcast takes a closer look at the case in which the Vietnamese government is suing Berlin-based exile journalists. Sebastian Engelbrecht discusses the political background, the implications for press freedom, and what this cross-border legal action means for journalists living in exile.

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Sexual Violence Against Zimbabwean Exiled Journalist

  • Law and Democracy Support Foundation (LDSF)

Law and Democracy Support Foundation (LDSF) strongly condemns the sexual and physical assaults, threats, and surveillance targeting the exiled journalist Sophia Tekwani and her family in Sweden, as part of a dangerous pattern of transnational repression by Zimbabwean authorities.

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Casualty of War: Sudan’s Media Emergency

  • Nieman Reports
  • Meera Selva

Sudan’s ongoing war has upended the country’s nascent and burgeoning digital media scene and created a chaotic, polarized information space. The Sudanese journalists who continue to report on the conflict, including the recent wave of killings in El Fasher, risk the most extreme consequences.

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Ending the Silence on Online Harassment of Journalists

  • European Federation of Journalists
  • Elodie Vialle

On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) is releasing a new report “Ending the Silence on Online Harassment of Journalists”. Authored by journalist and tech policy advisor Elodie Vialle, the report provides an overview of the widespread phenomenon that is online harassment targeting journalists, whose normalisation makes it harder to address.

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Journalism In Exile: Reporting Away From Home

  • Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN)
  • Neha Banka

Geographic barriers, constant surveillance, and restricted access to their home countries are just some of the challenges faced by investigative journalists living in exile. How to continue reporting from a distance is one part of the story; how to figure out the basics of everyday life in a new country while continuing to do this journalism is perhaps less discussed.

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A Syrian Photographer Trapped by The Laws That Saved Her

  • Coda
  • Sara Kontar & Nadia Beard

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.

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Exiled Journalists Confront Entrenched Authoritarianism

  • LatAm Journalism Review (LJR)
  • Teresa Mioli

Repression forced journalists to flee their countries, but even from exile three journalists remain committed to reporting what’s happening back home. They shared their stories with an online crowd of almost 200 people in a panel held on Nov. 18 by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.

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