China, Turkey Jail Most Journalists This Year, as Figure Tops 250 Worldwide

Working journalists risk arrest in many countries, and in some they are jailed. This year, the figure hit was well over 200. The nations where journalists were arrested the most were Saudi Arabia and Turkey. But, the list is much longer than that.

The Committee to Protect Journalists put out its 2019 report today. The authors wrote, “For the fourth consecutive year, at least 250 journalists are imprisoned globally as authoritarians like Xi Jinping, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Mohammed bin Salman, and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi show no signs of letting up on the critical media.” The group started tracking the risks of being a journalist in 2016, when the figure was 273.

The most often cited reasons for the imprisonments were “anti-state” reporting. There was a sharp increase in journalists arrested for reporting “false news” as well.

In some countries, the government simply shuts down media. In Turkey, this number reached 100 in 2019. Some of the journals from these outlets went into exile, the report says. Others face “self-censorship.” Some of these journalists also face jail time.

China has become a particularly dangerous country for journalists. Forty-eight of them were put in jail this year. It is part of president Xi Jinping’s effort to put a lock on his power. He has extended the length of his presidency in an unprecedented move. The province of Xinjiang, which contains the most Muslims, is particularly dangerous. The odds of arrest in the area are particularly high.

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In Saudi Arabia, at least 26 journalists are jailed. In a particularly dangerous move, many of the journalists have not even been accused of crimes.

The report gave further details about who was arrested:

• Ninety-eight percent of journalists jailed worldwide are locals covering their own country. Three of the four journalists with foreign citizenship are imprisoned in Saudi Arabia and the fourth in China.
• Twenty of the jailed journalists, or 8%, are female, compared with 13% last year.
• Politics was the beat most likely to land journalists in jail, followed by human rights and corruption.
• More than half of those imprisoned were reporters publishing online.
• Those included in the reports are those “people who cover the news or comment on public affairs in any media, including print, photographs, radio, television, and online.”

The primary takeaway from the report is probably this: journalists do not operate in safety in some of the worlds’ largest nations. When they do so, they do it at great risk to their freedom.

A database of journalists arrested this year has been posted by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

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