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Committee to Protect Journalist was Founded
The Committee to Protect Journalists was founded in 1981 by a group of U.S. correspondents who realized they could not ignore the plight of colleagues whose reporting put them in peril on a daily basis. -
First Advocacy Campaign
The idea that journalists around the world should come together to defend the rights of colleagues working in repressive and dangerous environments led to CPJ's first advocacy campaign in 1982 -
Prison Census in Uzbekistan
Muhammad Bekjanov and Yusuf Ruzimuradov are two jounalists who were imprisoned in Uzbekistan. A court in the capital, Tashkent, handed Bekjanov a 14-year jail term, while Ruzimuradov was given a 15-year sentence on charges of publishing and distributing a banned newspaper that criticized President Islam Karimov. -
Prison Census in China
Xu was serving a prison term on charges of “leaking state secrets” through his academic work on military history and “economic crimes” related to unauthorized publishing of foreign policy issues. -
Prison Census in Eritrea
Security agents arrested Keleta, a reporter for the private weekly Tsigenay, while he was on his way to work in July 2000. He has not been heard from since. Sources told CPJ at the time that the reporter was being held in connection with the government’s overall crackdown on the press. -
Other Eritrea Imprisonments
Eritrean security forces jailed at least 10 local journalists without charge or trial in the days after September 18, 2001. The arrests took place less than a week after authorities effectively shut down the country’s fledgling private press. -
More on Eritrea
During a July 2002 fact-finding mission to the capital, Asmara, a CPJ delegation confirmed that Eritrean authorities had arrested three state media reporters in February 2002 as part of the government’s mass crackdown on the press, which began in September 2001. Reporters Saadia Ahmed and Saleh Aljezeeri were released, according to CPJ sources. -
Another in Uzbekistan
A contributor to the state-owned weekly Hurriyat, Mehliboyev was arrested while covering a rally in Tashkent in support of the banned Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) -
Other China Imprisonment
Memetemin, a writer, teacher, and translator who had actively advocated for the Uighur ethnic group in the northwestern Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, was detained in Kashgar, Xinjiang province, on charges of “leaking state secrets.” -
Cuba releases Imprisoned Journalists
The Cuban government freed 17 journalists arrested in the Black Spring crackdown of 2003, but four independent reporters and editors remained in prison when CPJ conducted its annual census on December 1. -
Cuba Imprisonment
A reporter for the independent news agency Patria in the western city of Colón, Hernández Carrillo was sentenced in April 2003 to 25 years in prison under Law 88 for the Protection of Cuba’s National Independence and Economy. Hernández Carrillo, 39, was subjected to harassment and assault while in prison, according to his mother, Asunción Carrillo, who said prison authorities had encouraged inmates to attack him. -
Another in China
Huang, a columnist for the U.S.-based website Boxun News, was arrested in Jiangsu province, and his family was not notified of his arrest for more than three months. On September 27, 2004, the Changzhou Intermediate People’s Court sentenced him to 12 years in prison on charges of “subversion of state authority,” plus four years’ deprivation of political rights. The sentence was unusually harsh and appeared linked to his intention to form an opposition party. -
Imprisonment in Burma
Ne Min, a lawyer and a former stringer for the BBC, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on May 7, 2004, on charges that he illegally passed information to “antigovernment” organizations operating in border areas, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma, a prisoner aid group based in Thailand. -
The Gambia Imprisonment
Agents of the National Intelligence Agency picked up Manneh, a reporter with the government-controlled Daily Observer, after he tried to print a BBC story critical of President Yahya Jammeh. Colleagues witnessed his arrest by two plainclothes officers at the premises of the Daily Observer. -
Ethiopia Imprisonment
Ethiopian authorities have refused to provide information about the whereabouts, legal status, or health of Gama and Tesfazghi, Eritrean state television journalists who were arrested by Kenyan border authorities in late 2006 after the Ethiopian military invasion of southern Somalia.
