Reporters Without Borders’ annual report indicates that “Iraq, Syria and Yemen” are among the countries where journalists are most at risk of kidnapping. There is a notable increase this year in the number of female journalists detained, with a 30% increase compared to 2021.
The organization considered this percentage to be a “record”, pointing out that the journalists detained are concentrated in two regions of the world, the most important of which are the Arab countries, and counting men and women together, three quarters of the prisoners are concentrated in two regions of the world. The organization reported that “about 45% of journalists are detained in Asia and more than 30% in the Middle East and North Africa”.
The report says that as of December 1, 2022, a total of 533 journalists have been detained “solely for doing their job”, and more than a quarter of them have been arrested during the year. The report notes that Reporters Without Borders has never registered such a large number of imprisoned journalists.
The organization said: “This recent increase in the number of journalists detained (13.4% increase in 2022, after a 20% increase in 2021) confirms that authoritarian regimes are increasingly imprisoning journalists who ‘harass’ them. “, most often without trial. Only a third of the journalists detained have been convicted, while the others (63.6%) are being held without trial.”
More than half of the journalists imprisoned in the world are divided between five countries: China (110), Burma (62), Iran (47), Vietnam (39) and Belarus (31), and Iran is the only country that has joined this “black list” this year.
