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.
“The majority of jailed journalists are concentrated in just a handful of countries, including Turkey and Egypt, which have both nearly doubled the number of journalists in jail in the past year,” said Joel Simon, Executive Director of CPJ. “The situation highlights that those governments who seek to silence criticism and stifle investigation through the use of prison are global outliers whose abusive practices must be condemned.”
Egypt was holding 23 journalists behind bars compared with 12 last year. In Turkey, the number of journalists jailed doubled to 14 over the same period; they include Iraqi journalist Mohammed Ismael Rasool, a fixer and translator for VICE.
Of the 199 journalists imprisoned worldwide, more than half worked online. Freelancers made up less than one third of imprisoned journalists, a percentage that has declined steadily since 2011. The most common charges used to put journalists in jail were anti-state. For example, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian has been held in Iran for more than 500 days on charges including espionage.
CPJ’s prison census does not include journalists who disappear or are abducted by non-state entities such as criminal gangs or militant groups. Their cases are classified as “missing” or “abducted.” For example, CPJ estimates that at least 40 journalists are missing in the Middle East and North Africa, many of whom are believed held by militant groups including Islamic State.
Other trends and details that emerged in CPJ’s research include:
- While 28 countries worldwide had journalists in jail, 10 of those were imprisoning a single journalist. The 2015 survey reinforces CPJ’s finding that only a handful of countries engage in systematic imprisonment of journalists.
- With 17 behind bars, Eritrea remained the worst jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa, and the world’s worst abuser of due process. No Eritrean detainee on CPJ’s census has ever been publicly charged with a crime or brought before a court for trial. Six journalists who worked for the government-controlled station Radio Bana were released early in 2015, the reason for which was not clear.
- The percentage of journalist prisoners who are freelancers was 28 percent. The percentage has steadily declined since 2011.
- Globally, 109 of the prisoners worked online, and 83 worked in print.
- The number of prisoners rose in Bangladesh, Gambia, India, and Saudi Arabia in addition to China, Egypt, and Turkey.
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