Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

Exiled Turkish journalist Can Dündar recently revealed that he had been added to the so-called terrorist “gray list”, a database published by the Turkish Interior Ministry that identifies alleged terrorists and offers rewards for their capture. He and 14 others are wanted for their alleged ties to the exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen.

The special criminal court in Yaoundé, Cameroon fines 72-year-old Amadou Vamoulké US$76,000 and sentences him to 12 years in prison.

During a closed-door trial Pirmuhammadzoda was found guilty of participation in an opposition political organisation banned as extremist. In October, Pirmuhammadzoda said that officers had tortured him to make him sign a false confession.

Ethiopian police granted permission to extend the detention of online journalist Meskerem Abera for 14 days after she is accused of inciting violence for covering protests taking place in the capital Addis Ababa.

The Committee to Protect Journalists’ annual prison census has found that at least 42 journalists were imprisoned in Myanmar for their reporting as of 1 December.

Alongside threat of prosecutions, Iranian authorities are clearly in a rush to start trials and mete out speedy punishments, says CPJ.

“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 March 2022, Russian lawmakers adopted changes to the country’s laws, imposing fines and prison terms for discrediting the military and the actions of government agencies abroad, or spreading “fake” information about them. Badmayev faces up to three years in prison if convicted.