Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva
Freelance journalist Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted in December 2022 on multiple anti-state charges in relation to the outbreak of mass protests in the country’s eastern Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region. Authorities arrested Mamadshoeva in May 2022 after accusing her of organizing those protests by the region’s Pamiri ethnic minority. Mamadshoeva…
Tajikistan authorities detain Pamiri journalists Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva and Khushruz Jumayev for more than 2 months
Stockholm, August 11, 2022 – Tajikistan authorities should release journalists Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva and Khushruz Jumayev, drop any charges against them, and stop prosecuting journalists in secret, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday. On May 18, officers with the State Committee of National Security (SCNS) arrested Mamadshoeva, a freelance journalist and human rights activist, from…
Muratkhan Bazarbayev
Muratkhan Bazarbayev, a driver for Almaty city municipality-funded broadcaster Almaty TV, was shot and killed in an attack on a convoy of city officials and outlet staff on January 6, 2022, amid large-scale anti-government riots, according to multiple news reports. Unidentified gunmen with automatic weapons opened fire on vehicles carrying city mayor Baqytzhan Sagintayev and…
Turkish police raid Etkin News Agency, arrest reporter Pınar Gayıp
Istanbul, January 14, 2021 – Turkish authorities must release journalist Pınar Gayıp immediately and return all items confiscated in a recent raid on the Etkin News Agency, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Last night, police raided the Istanbul office of the Etkin News Agency, a news outlet supportive of the Socialist Party of…
Aliaksandra Kvitkevich
Belarusian journalist Aliaksandra Kvitkevich was arrested in November 2020 while covering a protest on charges of “participating in an unsanctioned event,” and sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest. She was one of dozens of journalists detained for documenting widespread demonstrations in the second half of 2020 calling on President Aleksandr Lukashenko to resign. Kvitkevich…
Belarusian photographer Tatsiana Tkachova quit her state-owned newspaper when it failed to cover violence against protesters
As anti-government protests continue to engulf Belarus after the August 9, 2020 election, there’s a revolt brewing inside some state media outlets, where journalists are striking and quitting over what they see as their employers’ failure to accurately cover the protest movement and the government’s harsh response. Thousands of people have been detained at the demonstrations including…
Bülent Utku
Police detained Bülent Utku, a board member of the foundation that publishes the embattled opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, after a raid of the newspaper’s main office in Istanbul on October 31, 2016, alongside at least 11 other staff members and board members. The Chief Prosecutor’s Office of Istanbul released an official statement soon after the raid,…
Utku Deniz Sirkeci
Sirkeci, the Ankara bureau chief of the leftist cultural magazine Tavir, was arrested and charged with belonging to the outlawed organization Devrimci Sol (also known as Dev Sol), under Article 168/2 of the Penal Code. Court records from Sirkeci’s trial show that the state accused him of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a bank in…
Yetkin Yıldız
Yetkin Yıldız, chief editor of the news website Aktifhaber, is one of several journalists imprisoned after the failed 2016 coup attempt. He has twice been charged in joint trials. He was acquitted of charges that linked him to the coup attempt, in 2018 he was found guilty of being a member of a terrorist organization. An…
Seytkazy Matayev
A Kazakh court on October 3, 2016, sentenced Seytkazy Matayev, the head of the Kazakh Journalists’ Union and chairman of the National Press Club, and his son Aset Matayev, the director of independent news agency KazTag, to six and five years in prison respectively, in a joint trial, according to press reports. Kazakh authorities detained…