Half of Detained Journalists Worldwide are Imprisoned in Iran, China, Egypt and Eritrea
Reporters Without Borders announced the number of journalists held in prison worldwide and journalists taken hostage in the past 12 months. Across the world, 153 journalists and 161 citizen journalists are behind bars
Latest report on the status of press freedom and media in countries around the world
Working conditions for journalists in some parts of the world have become more dangerous. Reporters Without Borders published the first section of its “Annual Report on Press Freedom” on Tuesday, December 15 (December 24).
This section includes statistics on journalists imprisoned for doing their job. As of the report’s release date in mid-December, 153 professional journalists worldwide were behind bars.
Half of this number are imprisoned in China, Egypt, Iran and Eritrea. Reporters Without Borders considers this situation indicative of poor conditions for press freedom and media in these four countries.
Read more: Human rights experts: Iran must end harassment of journalists
The organization also criticized the increase in government pressure on journalists in Turkey. 11 percent of all journalist detentions in 2015 occurred in Turkey.
In addition to professional journalists, 161 citizen journalists and 14 media employees are currently imprisoned worldwide.
Hostage-taking and Suppression of Independent Information
According to the non-governmental organization “Reporters Without Borders,” 54 journalists were taken hostage in various countries over the past 12 months.
This figure is one-third more than the number of journalists held hostage by armed paramilitary groups by the end of the previous calendar year.
The annual press freedom report states that journalist abductions have been concentrated in countries involved in civil war.
These kidnappings have occurred in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and places where armed militias “are seeking to gain power and silence the voices of critics to achieve it.”
In addition to 54 journalists held hostage until mid-December, eight journalists have also disappeared worldwide with no reliable information about their fate. Reporters Without Borders emphasized that uncertainty about the fate of missing journalists has a “terrible effect” on the morale of their colleagues.
Michael Rediske, spokesperson for the board of Reporters Without Borders, described these high figures as horrifying and added: “These kidnappings show that armed groups in crisis-stricken Arab countries spare no effort in suppressing the voices of critics and independent information.”
Classification of Terrorist Groups as Kidnappers
The terrorist network “Islamic State” abducted the most journalists in the past 12 months. Currently, 18 journalists are held hostage by this group. Following “Islamic State,” Yemen’s Houthi Shiites with 9 hostages and Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra with 4 hostages rank in subsequent positions.
According to the annual press freedom report, 95 percent of journalists held hostage are citizens of the countries in which they were abducted, with only 5 percent being foreign journalists.
The report states that during 2015, 79 journalists were abducted, and by mid-December, 25 of them had been released.
However, the total number of journalist hostage-takings in this year was less than in 2014, due to changes in the situation in eastern Ukraine. In 2014, the highest number of journalist hostage cases were reported in eastern Ukraine, but no hostage cases of journalists were reported in this region in 2015.
The number of journalists killed in 2015 will be released on December 28 (December 7).
