Press Freedom
CPJ Updates
- Alarm bells: Trump’s first 100 days ramp up fear for the press, democracy
- 2024 is deadliest year for journalists in CPJ history; almost 70% killed by Israel
- In record year, China, Israel, and Myanmar are world’s leading jailers of journalists
- Haiti, Israel most likely to let journalists’ murders go unpunished, CPJ 2024 impunity index shows
- No justice for journalists targeted by Israel despite strong evidence of war crime
- On Edge: What the US election could mean for journalists and global press freedom
- Forced to flee: Exiled journalists face unsafe passage and transnational repression
- Israel-Gaza war brings 2023 journalist killings to devastating high
- 2023 prison census: Jailed journalist numbers near record high; Israel imprisonments spike
Reporter Without Borders
OPC Repeats Demand for Release of 3 in Egypt
Since December 29, 2013, authorities in Egypt have held three Al Jazeera journalists under detention allegedly for spreading falsehoods about the country and for being part of a terrorist organization. At the end of 2013, the Overseas Press Club of America issued an open letter demanding the immediate freedom of Cairo Bureau Chief Mohamed Fahmy, producer Baher Mohamed and correspondent Peter Greste. Since then, the OPC has learned of the conditions under which Fahmy is being held.
Fahmy, a dual Canadian-Egyptian citizen is being kept in a windowless room without a bed in Cairo’s notorious Scorpion Prison. His pre-existing shoulder injury has been exacerbated by the arrest and incarceration but so far prison authorities have refused him medical assistance. They have also refused to deliver to Fahmy a sleeping bag and pillow delivered by his family. A family member who recently visited the prison says that Fahmy looked disoriented and struggled to recognize the visitor at first. Fahmy’s family fears he is being subjected to physical and psychological torture.
The OPC not reiterates its demand for the freedom of Fahmy and his colleagues but asks the Egyptian authorities and General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to make sure the detainees receive proper medical care and be accorded humane treatment amid this unjustifiable incarceration.