NEW YORK—China, Egypt and Iran top the list of the world’s leading jailers of journalists in a new annual report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Eritrea, Ethiopia and Turkey also figured prominently on the list.
The report released early Tuesday says a quarter of the 199 journalists worldwide who were in prison as of Dec. 1 because of their work were in China. The Communist Party-run country under President Xi Jinping had 49 journalists behind bars, the highest number for China since the CPJ began its annual survey in 1990.
The report also singled out three jailed Chinese who were not included on its annual list: the three brothers of a U.S.-based journalist with Radio Free Asia who covers China’s treatment of his ethnic group, the Muslim Uighurs. CPJ calls the jailing of Shohret Hoshur’s brothers an act of retaliation for his reporting and an example of “the lengths to which China is willing to go to silence its critics.”
Egypt was second on the list with 23 journalists in prison, up from a dozen a year ago and zero in 2012.
“Perhaps nowhere has the climate for the press deteriorated more rapidly than in Egypt,” the report says, accusing President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of acting under the pretext of national security since he took office in 2014 a year after the military ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. In August, el-Sissi approved a law that included heavy fines for journalists who don’t follow the government line.
Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian is among the 19 journalists that the CPJ lists as being behind bars in Iran, an Islamic republic under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani.
