International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)

The report documented more than 180 press freedom violations, including 27 journalist killings, 1 death in custody, 58 journalist arrests or detentions, and 52 violations of minority, regional and rural journalists across South Asia.

Several media groups in Cambodia are urging authorities to restore their right to access the country’s COVID-19 ‘red zones’. They argued that the current restrictions are preventing them from fulfilling their duty of providing the public with adequate information about the pandemic.

Hong Kong media groups said the conviction of journalist Bao Choy Yuk Ling, who accessed a government database for an investigative report regarding a mob attack against protesters in 2019, could have a chilling effect on the industry.

Journalists in Myanmar have put their lives at risk to tell the stories of protestors, doctors, nurses and citizens impacted by the military coup, writes Phil Thornton.

Yesypenko is detained and accused of “illegal production, repair, or modification of firearms” and “espionage” for Ukrainian intelligence. His lawyer said the journalist had been tortured with electric shocks and beatings in order to obtain a confession.

Rana Muhammad Azeem, secretary general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, has received a death threat from a gangster after exposing a mafia network in a recent TV talk-show broadcast on “92 News Channel”.

The International Federation of Journalists expresses solidarity with journalists and their sources in Samoa who are being subject to legal threats and investigations that seek to prevent them from reporting on the truth.

Catarina Andreeva and Darja Chulcova, two journalists for Belsat, were each sentenced on 18 February to two years in prison for reporting live from an anti-government rally in Minsk in November.

Photographer Shafiqul Islam Kajol, cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore, and writer Mushtaq Ahmed have been charged under the Digital Security Act, a law which has been regularly used by authorities to silence criticism.

The International Federation of Journalists and its Asia-Pacific affiliates called on Myanmar’s military to allow the full and free functioning of the media and to urgently lift controls that are impeding the media’s duty to inform the public.

Five men have been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of journalist Humayun Kabir Balu, sixteen years after he was killed in a targeted explosion in Khulna in 2004. He was the editor of “Dainik Janmabhumi” and a former president of the Khulna Press Club.

Reporter Rahmatullah Nikzad was killed in Ghazni province by unknown assailants on 21 December. He is the third media worker to be killed in Afghanistan this month.

Complaints submitted to the United Nations by the International Federation of Journalists and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate allege that under a shroud of impunity, Israel has used lethal force in its systematic targeting of journalists working in Palestine, and failed to investigate killings of media workers.

The International Federation of Journalists has sent a letter to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling on the government to take swift action to improve the state of impunity in India. According to IFJ monitoring, 55 journalists have been killed since 2010 in India.

One year after an International Mission to Mexico, the government has failed to fulfil its commitments, and the freedom of expression situation in the country is worsening.

Based on the monitoring of the International Federation of Journalists, the toll includes seven murdered Pakistani journalists, three in Afghanistan, three in India, and one in Bangladesh.