Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, founder and president of elPeriódico newspaper, has been detained on money laundering and blackmail charges that are widely seen as retaliation for his publication’s coverage of alleged corruption involving Guatemala’s president and attorney general. (Reuters/Luis Echeverria)

It’s been anoth­er record-break­ing year for the num­ber of jour­nal­ists jailed for prac­tic­ing their pro­fes­sion. The Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists’ annu­al prison cen­sus has found that 363 reporters were deprived of their free­dom as of Decem­ber 1, 2022 – a new glob­al high that over­takes last year’s record by 20% and marks anoth­er grim mile­stone in a dete­ri­o­rat­ing media land­scape.

This year’s top five jail­ers of jour­nal­ists are Iran, Chi­na, Myan­mar, Turkey, and Belarus, respec­tive­ly. A key dri­ver behind author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments’ increas­ing­ly oppres­sive efforts to sti­fle the media: try­ing to keep the lid on broil­ing dis­con­tent in a world dis­rupt­ed by COVID-19 and the eco­nom­ic fall­out from Russia’s war on Ukraine. 

In Iran, dozens of jour­nal­ists are among the esti­mat­ed 14,000 Ira­ni­ans arrest­ed dur­ing the crack­down on protests sparked by the death in police cus­tody of Mah­sa Ami­ni, a 22-year-old Kur­dish woman arrest­ed for alleged­ly break­ing Iran’s hijab law. Since Sep­tem­ber, the demon­stra­tions have spread nation­wide, with pro­test­ers broad­en­ing demands for women’s rights to calls for strikes and the over­throw­ing of Iran’s lead­ers. Author­i­ties have impris­oned a record num­ber of female jour­nal­ists – 22 out of the 49 arrest­ed since the start of the protests are women –  a reflec­tion of the promi­nent role they’ve played in cov­er­ing this women-led upris­ing.

Iran’s crackdown on nationwide protests has made it the world’s worst jailer of journalists in 2022. Many are being held in Tehran’s Evin prison. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA [West Asia News Agency via Reuters)

In Chi­na, author­i­ties tight­ened online cen­sor­ship dur­ing recent protests over the government’s zero-COVID lock­down poli­cies and sev­er­al jour­nal­ists are report­ed to have been briefly detained while cov­er­ing the demon­stra­tions. 

CPJ’s data also high­light­ed anoth­er theme: the ongo­ing repres­sion of minori­ties.

In Iran, Kurds have borne the brunt of the Iran­ian government’s retal­i­a­tion against the protests, and at least nine Kur­dish jour­nal­ists are among those in jail. In Turkey, author­i­ties arrest­ed 25 Kur­dish jour­nal­ists work­ing either for the Mezopotamya News Agency, the all-female JINNEWS out­let, or pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies that made con­tent used by Kur­dish out­lets in Europe. In Iraq, all three jour­nal­ists on this year’s cen­sus are jailed in  Iraqi Kur­dis­tan. And in Chi­na, many impris­oned jour­nal­ists are eth­nic Uighurs from Xin­jiang, where Bei­jing has been accused of crimes against human­i­ty for its mass deten­tions and harsh repres­sion of the region’s most­ly Mus­lim eth­nic groups.

Impris­on­ing jour­nal­ists is just one mea­sure of how author­i­tar­i­an lead­ers try to stran­gle press free­dom. Around the world, gov­ern­ments are also hon­ing tac­tics like “fake news” laws, are using crim­i­nal defama­tion and vague­ly word­ed leg­is­la­tion to crim­i­nal­ize jour­nal­ism, are ignor­ing the rule of law and abus­ing the judi­cial sys­tem, and are exploit­ing tech­nol­o­gy to spy on reporters and their fam­i­lies.

In coun­tries rang­ing from Rus­sia to Nicaragua to Afghanistan, inde­pen­dent media out­lets have been gut­ted as reporters flee into exile or are intim­i­dat­ed into self-cen­sor­ship. And while sup­pres­sive strate­gies dif­fer between coun­tries, the cas­es doc­u­ment­ed in CPJ’s cen­sus share a com­mon thread of offi­cial cru­el­ty and vin­dic­tive­ness.

Some, like Chi­na and Sau­di Ara­bia, have a record of keep­ing jour­nal­ists in deten­tion even after their sen­tences end. Oth­ers engage in ran­dom acts of cal­lous­ness. In Viet­nam, for exam­ple, jour­nal­ist Pham Doan Trang, serv­ing a nine-year sen­tence for dis­trib­ut­ing pro­pa­gan­da against the state, was trans­ferred from Hanoi to a remote prison more than 900 miles away from her fam­i­ly – a com­mon tac­tic to pre­vent reg­u­lar prison vis­its.

In Belarus, Bel­sat TV cor­re­spon­dent Kat­siary­na Andreye­va, one of dozens of jour­nal­ists detained for doc­u­ment­ing nation­wide protests against Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dr Lukashenko, was on the verge of com­plet­ing a two-year prison term when a court sen­tenced her to anoth­er eight years on a charge of “giv­ing away state secrets.”

In Turkey, where the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court ordered a retri­al for Hat­ice Duman – already 20 years into a life sen­tence – the jour­nal­ist told an Istan­bul court this month that prison offi­cials had con­fis­cat­ed her legal doc­u­ments and notes sev­er­al weeks ahead of the tri­al, there­by vio­lat­ing her right to pre­pare for her defense. (Ear­li­er, Duman told a CPJ in an inter­view that per­son­al pos­ses­sions like her desk, books, diary, and even blank pieces of paper were also tak­en in the ward raid.) 

Oth­er key take­aways:

WORST OFFENDERS

1. IRAN

Iran’s crack­down on mass protests fol­low­ing Amini’s death left at least 62 jour­nal­ists in jail as of Decem­ber 1. The count would have been even high­er had anoth­er 21 jour­nal­ists detained after the start of the demon­stra­tions not been released on bail ahead of the cen­sus date.

The num­ber of women among those held is unprece­dent­ed. When Iran jailed a then-record num­ber of jour­nal­ists in the years fol­low­ing the dis­put­ed 2009 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, peak­ing with 47 jour­nal­ists impris­oned in 2012, just four of those reporters were female.

By con­trast, 24 women are list­ed in this year’s cen­sus; 22 were of them arrest­ed after the protests began.  

Dur­ing this year’s arrests, sources told CPJ of a pat­tern of predawn raids on reporters’ homes, with police seiz­ing their devices and some­times beat­ing those they took into cus­tody. Often, their cov­er­age dis­ap­pears too. Many of their social media accounts – a key pub­lish­ing plat­form in a coun­try where most media are state-con­trolled – have van­ished, either shut down by the gov­ern­ment or pre­emp­tive­ly delet­ed by jour­nal­ists fear­ing retal­i­a­tion for their report­ing.

The 62 behind bars rep­re­sent the high­est num­ber doc­u­ment­ed by CPJ for Iran in the 30 years of its cen­sus, eas­i­ly sur­pass­ing the pre­vi­ous impris­on­ment record set dur­ing the after­math of the country’s dis­put­ed 2009 elec­tion.

2. CHINA

China’s tight cen­sor­ship of the media and the fear of speak­ing out in a coun­try that con­ducts such exten­sive sur­veil­lance on its peo­ple makes it espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult to research the exact num­ber of jour­nal­ists among its prison pop­u­la­tion. Against that back­drop, the slight drop in the known num­ber of jour­nal­ists jailed in the coun­try – from a revised total of 48  in 2021 to 43 in 2022 – should not be inter­pret­ed as any eas­ing of the country’s intol­er­ance for inde­pen­dent report­ing.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, jailed since 2020, faces a possible life sentence under the city’s national security law. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Uighur jour­nal­ists con­tin­ue to com­prise a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of those serv­ing harsh sen­tences on neb­u­lous charges. Omer­jan Hasan, for exam­ple, is serv­ing 15 years for pub­lish­ing an unof­fi­cial his­to­ry of the Xin­jiang region. Ilham Weli, Juret Haji, Men­timin Obul, and Mirkamil Ablim­it have been held since 2018 on the accu­sa­tion of being two-faced – a term Chi­nese author­i­ties fre­quent­ly use to describe those they see as open­ly sup­port­ing but secret­ly oppos­ing gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. Edi­tor Memet­jan Abliz Bori­yar, also detained since 2018, is accused of approv­ing the release of books that only lat­er were banned by Chi­nese author­i­ties. Anoth­er dis­turb­ing trend: A group of stu­dents who worked for Ilham Tohti, the jailed-for-life founder of Xin­jiang news web­site Uighur­biz, are among those believed to have com­plet­ed their sen­tences – and then moved to so-called “reed­u­ca­tion camps” instead of being released.

In Hong Kong, inde­pen­dent media out­lets have been silenced fol­low­ing Beijing’s puni­tive tar­get­ing of those like pro-democ­ra­cy media entre­pre­neur Jim­my Lai. The treat­ment of Lai, incar­cer­at­ed since Decem­ber 2020, is seen as emblem­at­ic of author­i­ties’ grow­ing dis­re­gard for due process and the “one coun­try, two sys­tems” arrange­ment guar­an­tee­ing Hong Kong’s judi­cial inde­pen­dence from Chi­na. Lai, who has U.K. cit­i­zen­ship, remains in a max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty prison even after com­plet­ing a 20-month sen­tence on var­i­ous charges. On Decem­ber 10, while await­ing the start of anoth­er tri­al that could lead to a life sen­tence under a dra­con­ian nation­al secu­ri­ty law, he was sen­tenced to five years and nine months on fraud charges – even as his legal prepa­ra­tion for the secu­ri­ty tri­al was ham­pered by Hong Kong author­i­ties’ push­back against the Novem­ber rul­ing by the city’s top court that he could be rep­re­sent­ed by a British lawyer.

3. MYANMAR

Myan­mar cat­a­pult­ed into CPJ’s cen­sus rank­ings as the world’s sec­ond-worst jail­er of jour­nal­ists in 2021, when a Feb­ru­ary mil­i­tary coup oust­ed the country’s elect­ed gov­ern­ment and cracked down on cov­er­age of the new regime. Accord­ing to the human rights group Assis­tance Asso­ci­a­tion for Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers, that retal­i­a­tion took a coun­try­wide toll of more than 2,500 dead and more than 16,000 detained on polit­i­cal charges.

Police officers and lawyers wait outside a Yangon court for a scheduled March 12, 2021, hearing for a group of journalists detained during protests against Myanmar’s military coup. (Reuters/Stringer)

The num­ber of Myan­mar jour­nal­ists known to be jailed on Decem­ber 1 rose to at least 42 – up from a revised 30 last year – as the regime dou­bled down on its efforts to mute reporters and dis­rupt the country’s few remain­ing inde­pen­dent media out­lets. Many news orga­ni­za­tions remain reluc­tant to iden­ti­fy their detained staff and free­lancers to avoid the harsh­er sen­tences often met­ed out to jour­nal­ists.

Near­ly half of those detained were sen­tenced in 2022, most under an anti-state pro­vi­sion that broad­ly penal­izes “incite­ment” and “false news.” In anoth­er case in Novem­ber, jour­nal­ist Myo San Soe was sen­tenced to 15 years in prison on ter­ror­ism charges for con­tact­ing mem­bers of People’s Defense Forces, an array of insur­gent groups fight­ing the regime.

4. TURKEY

The num­ber of jour­nal­ists held in Turkey rose from 18 in 2021 to 40 in 2022 after the arrests of 25 Kur­dish jour­nal­ists in the sec­ond half of the year. The jour­nal­ists’ lawyers told CPJ all were jailed on sus­pi­cion of ter­ror­ism – a  result of the country’s ongo­ing efforts to silence those it asso­ciates with the out­lawed Kur­dis­tan Work­ers’ Par­ty (PKK).

A screenshot of a Mezopotamya Agency video showing a journalist being taken into custody on October 25, 2022. (YouTube/Mezopotamya Agency)

And while even this year’s jump in num­bers has left few­er jour­nal­ists in prison than in the after­math of a failed 2016 coup attempt, Turkey’s inde­pen­dent media remain dec­i­mat­ed by gov­ern­ment shut­downs, takeovers, and the forc­ing of scores of jour­nal­ists into exile or out of the pro­fes­sion.

Many now fear that the lat­est arrests could sig­nal a fresh assault on press free­dom ahead of next year’s elec­tions, espe­cial­ly giv­en the Turk­ish parliament’s Octo­ber rat­i­fi­ca­tion of a con­tro­ver­sial media law man­dat­ing prison terms for those deemed to be spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion.

5. BELARUS

Belarus held 26 jour­nal­ists in cus­tody on Decem­ber 1 – up from 19 last year. Almost half are yet to be sen­tenced; two are serv­ing terms of 10 or more years. All known charges are either retal­ia­to­ry or anti-state, such as trea­son.

Belarus journalist Katsiaryna Andreyeva, shown here inside a defendant’s cage in a Minsk courtroom on February 18, 2021, was on the verge of completing a two-year prison term when a court sentenced her to another eight years on a charge of ‘giving away state secrets.’ (AP Photo)

The arrests have tak­en place against the back­drop of Lukashenko’s ongo­ing vin­dic­tive­ness against those cov­er­ing the after­math of his dis­put­ed 2020 elec­tion. Among those still held is Raman Prata­se­vich, the jour­nal­ist whose arrest caused a glob­al out­cry when Belarus author­i­ties divert­ed a Lithua­nia-bound com­mer­cial flight to the Belarus cap­i­tal of Min­sk to take him into cus­tody.

REGIONAL REPRESSION

ASIA

Media sup­pres­sion in Chi­na, Myan­mar, and Viet­nam make Asia the con­ti­nent with the high­est num­ber of impris­oned jour­nal­ists – a total of 119.

Viet­nam, which holds 21, shows lit­tle tol­er­ance for inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism, invok­ing tough sen­tences for those con­vict­ed of anti-state crimes. In Octo­ber, it sen­tenced Le Manh Ha to eight years in prison, to be fol­lowed by five years of house arrest; in August it sen­tenced blog­ger Le Anh Hung to five years for “abus­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic free­doms to infringe upon the inter­ests of the state, orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als.”

CPJ/Sarah Spicer

Among oth­er detainees are Pham Doan Trang, a win­ner of a CPJ Inter­na­tion­al Press Free­dom Award in 2022. Trang is serv­ing a nine-year prison sen­tence under a law that bans mak­ing or spread­ing news against the state. 

India, with sev­en jour­nal­ists in jail, con­tin­ues to draw crit­i­cism over its treat­ment of the media, in par­tic­u­lar its use of the Jam­mu and Kash­mir Pub­lic Safe­ty Act, a pre­ven­tive deten­tion law, to keep Kash­miri jour­nal­ists Aasif Sul­tan, Fahad Shah, and Sajad Gul behind bars after they were grant­ed court-ordered bail in sep­a­rate cas­es.

Afghanistan, with three impris­oned jour­nal­ists, appears on CPJ’s cen­sus for the first time in 12 years. Hun­dreds of Afghan jour­nal­ists fled the coun­try after the Tal­iban took back con­trol of the coun­try in August 2021; those who stayed face some­times vio­lent pres­sure to con­form to its fun­da­men­tal­ist ide­ol­o­gy.

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Pris­on­er num­bers paint a mis­lead­ing pic­ture of region­al press free­dom in sub-Saha­ran Africa. Eritrea remains the region’s worst jail­er of jour­nal­ists, rank­ing ninth glob­al­ly. The 16 in its cells have been held with­out tri­al or access to their fam­i­lies or lawyers for peri­ods rang­ing from 17 to 22 years.  

CPJ/Sarah Spicer

Cameroon has appeared in the prison cen­sus every year since 2014. It is the sec­ond-worst jail­er in the region, with five arbi­trar­i­ly detained under an opaque judi­cial sys­tem that includes the use of mil­i­tary tri­bunals to pros­e­cute jour­nal­ists, who are civil­ians under inter­na­tion­al law.

Ethiopia, which last year ranked a close sec­ond to  Eritrea as the region’s worst jail­er of jour­nal­ists, had only one jour­nal­ist in jail at the time of this year’s cen­sus. (That jour­nal­ist, Nat­nael Gecho, was released on bail after the Decem­ber 1 cen­sus date.) How­ev­er, author­i­ties have inter­mit­tent­ly detained more than 60 jour­nal­ists – most for pro­longed peri­ods with­out for­mal charges – since the start of Ethiopia’s civ­il war in Novem­ber 2020. On-the-ground fight­ing is accom­pa­nied by mis­in­for­ma­tion, dis­in­for­ma­tion, and a war of nar­ra­tives on social media. At least five jour­nal­ists are being held in the Tigray rebel-con­trolled city of Mekelle. They are not list­ed in CPJ’s cen­sus because their jail­ers are non-state actors, but they are a telling indi­ca­tor of the dan­ger­ous con­di­tions for reporters try­ing to cov­er the con­flict.

In Rwan­da, three of the four jour­nal­ists behind bars pub­lish their work on YouTube – one of the country’s few remain­ing pub­lish­ing plat­forms as the space for dis­sent­ing speech clos­es down with­in the tra­di­tion­al media. At least two of those YouTu­bers behind bars, Aimable Karasira and Dieudonne Niyon­sen­ga (also known as Has­san Cyu­ma), have alleged­ly been sub­ject­ed to tor­ture and ill-treat­ment. 

LATIN AMERICA

The rel­a­tive­ly low num­ber of jailed jour­nal­ists – two in Nicaragua, one in Cuba, and one in Guatemala – belies the con­tin­ued decline of press free­dom across the region. The year 2022 was espe­cial­ly dead­ly for jour­nal­ists in Mex­i­co and Haiti, and sev­er­al coun­tries passed leg­is­la­tion that intro­duced new options for crim­i­nal­iz­ing speech and report­ing.

CPJ/Sarah Spicer

In Guatemala, the high-pro­file arrest of José Rubén Zamo­ra sends a chill­ing mes­sage to jour­nal­ists, espe­cial­ly inves­tiga­tive and inde­pen­dent reporters, ahead of next year’s elec­tions and amid an ongo­ing crack­down on pros­e­cu­tors, judges, and jour­nal­ists who pre­vi­ous­ly brought cor­rup­tion cas­es to light. Zamo­ra, the founder and pres­i­dent of elPer­iódi­co, faces charges of mon­ey laun­der­ing, black­mail, and influ­ence ped­dling – charges seen as retal­i­a­tion for elPeriódico’s report­ing on alleged cor­rup­tion involv­ing Pres­i­dent Ale­jan­dro Giammat­tei and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Con­sue­lo Por­ras. ElPer­iódi­co stopped pub­lish­ing in print on Decem­ber 1, say­ing it was forced to do so after “120 days of polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pres­sure.”

In Nicaragua, attacks, arrests, and threats of impris­on­ment have forced almost all of the country’s inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists either into exile or out of their jobs; a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion exists in Cuba.

MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

Egypt and Sau­di Ara­bia remain among the world’s top 10 jail­ers of jour­nal­ists, with 21 and 11 pris­on­ers, respec­tive­ly.

CPJ/Sarah Spicer

Egypt, under pres­sure from the U.S. and the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment over its human rights record, includ­ed some jour­nal­ists in broad­er pris­on­er releas­es dur­ing the year, but con­tin­ued to detain oth­ers – among them edi­tor Ahmed Fayez for post­ing on Face­book that prison author­i­ties are force-feed­ing jour­nal­ist Alaa Abdelfat­tah to keep him alive dur­ing his pro­longed hunger strike.

Although a slight drop in num­bers from last year, when Egypt held 25 and Sau­di Ara­bia 14, media remain under pres­sure and, in the case of Sau­di Ara­bia, still con­front the chill­ing intim­ida­to­ry effect of the mur­der of jour­nal­ist Jamal Khashog­gi.

In Qatar, while no jour­nal­ists were impris­oned for their work at the time of CPJ’s cen­sus, cov­er­age of this year’s World Cup high­light­ed the country’s cen­sor­ship and strict media laws. 

EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA

Russia’s restric­tive new laws to con­trol the nar­ra­tive over its war on Ukraine, includ­ing a ban on call­ing the con­flict a war, have gut­ted the country’s remain­ing inde­pen­dent media. Scores of Russ­ian jour­nal­ists avoid­ed incar­cer­a­tion by flee­ing into exile. Of the 19 known to be in Russ­ian cus­tody, sev­er­al face sen­tences of up to 10 years on charges of spread­ing “fake news.”

CPJ/Sarah Spicer

Tajik­istan held six jour­nal­ists, mak­ing it the lead­ing jail­er in Cen­tral Asia. The pris­on­ers, whose arrests fol­lowed a bru­tal gov­ern­ment crack­down in the Gorno-Badakhshan region, were tried secret­ly behind closed doors in deten­tion cen­ters, not courts, and sen­tenced to lengthy prison terms amid alle­ga­tions of tor­ture. 

Geor­gia, a coun­try known until recent­ly for its demo­c­ra­t­ic prac­tices, is list­ed on CPJ’s cen­sus for the first time, with TV jour­nal­ist Nika Gvaramia begin­ning a three-and-a-half year prison sen­tence in May 2022.

[Editor’s note: The char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the arrests in the Gorno-Badakhshan region of Tajik­istan has been cor­rect­ed in the penul­ti­mate para­graph.]

CENSUS METHODOLOGY

The prison cen­sus accounts only for jour­nal­ists in gov­ern­ment cus­tody and does not include those who have dis­ap­peared or are held cap­tive by non-state actors. These cas­es are clas­si­fied as “miss­ing” or “abduct­ed.”

CPJ defines jour­nal­ists as peo­ple who cov­er the news or com­ment on pub­lic affairs in any media, includ­ing print, pho­tographs, radio, tele­vi­sion, and online. In its annu­al prison cen­sus, CPJ includes only those jour­nal­ists who it has con­firmed have been impris­oned in rela­tion to their work.

CPJ’s list is a snap­shot of those incar­cer­at­ed at 12:01 a.m. on Decem­ber 1, 2022. It does not include the many jour­nal­ists impris­oned and released through­out the year; accounts of those cas­es can be found at http://cpj.org. Jour­nal­ists remain on CPJ’s list until the orga­ni­za­tion deter­mines with rea­son­able cer­tain­ty that they have been released or have died in cus­tody.

Arlene Getz is edi­to­r­i­al direc­tor of the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists. Now based in New York, she has report­ed from Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Mid­dle East as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent, edi­tor, and edi­to­r­i­al exec­u­tive for Newsweek. Pri­or to join­ing CPJ, she spent nine years at Reuters, where she was the edi­tor in charge of the service’s glob­al Com­men­tary sec­tion.

Cen­sus report­ing by Beh Lih Yi, Anna Brakha, Shawn Crispin, Doja Daoud, Son­ali Dhawan, Assane Diagne, Jan-Albert Hoot­sen, Iris Hsu, Nick Lewis, Kunal Majumder, Sherif Man­sour, Scott Mayem­ba, Atti­la Mong, Mutho­ki Mumo, Rena­ta Ned­er, Özgür Ögret, Eve­lyn Okak­wu, Angela Quin­tal, Wal­i­ul­lah Rah­mani, Yeganeh Reza­ian, Justin Shi­lad, Jonathan Rozen, Gul­noza Said, Natal­ie South­wick, and Dánae Vílchez

Edit­ing by Arlene Getz, Jen­nifer Dun­ham, Nao­mi Zevel­off, Erik Crouch, Sarah Spicer, Made­line Earp, Suzan­nah Gon­za­les, and Tom Barkley