China, Egypt are worst jailers of journalists worldwide

Press release

China is holding 49 journalists behind bars, the highest number ever recorded there, making it the worst jailer of journalists worldwide for the second year in a row, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found. The number of journalists jailed in Egypt and Turkey also rose dramatically in 2015, even as the number of journalists imprisoned globally declined modestly from the record highs of the past three years. Rounding out the top 10 worst jailers of journalists in 2015 are Iran, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Vietnam.

Globally, there were 199 journalists behind bars on December 1, 2015. CPJ’s list does not include the many journalists imprisoned and released throughout the year. Detailed accounts of each journalist can be found at http://www.cpj.org/imprisoned/2015.php. For the second year since CPJ began compiling surveys of imprisoned journalists in 1990, not a single journalist in the Americas was imprisoned in relation to work on December 1.

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