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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.”

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.  

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.

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.

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.”

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