Media Tracker lists the challenges and achievements of the journalists and media organisations worldwide. Here’s a list of journalism at risk stories in the recent month. We would like to thank international media protection organisation and news outlets for their content.
- Hamid El Mahdaoui, editor news website info, was arrested in northern Morocco on 20 July after covering a peaceful demonstration banned by the authorities. He was charged for inciting the banned demonstration. And was sentenced to five days that later quadrupled to three months in prison and a fine of 20,000 dirhams (1,800 euros). Mahdaoui is also facing a second trial for endangering the state security.
(RSF)
- Indian authorities have detained Kamran Yousuf, a freelance photojournalist who was working in the Jammu and Kashmir region without charge since early September. According to media reports, Yousuf’s photographs have been published in the Greater Kashmir, a local English-language daily, and MunsifTV, an English-language news channel. According to media organisations the Jammu and Kashmir region has been especially volatile since the militant leader Burhan Wani was killed a year ago, and authorities have sought to reassert their control, in part, by cracking down on the media.
(CPJ)
- The president of Azerbaijan pardoned Alexander Lapshing, the Russian travel blogger, last week after his arrest nine months ago. He was accused of illegally visiting the disputed territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and calling for independence of the region. Another journalist, Mehman Aliyev, editor-in-chief of the Turan news agency, has also been released from pretrial detention the same day but isn’t allowed to leave the country until his trial at an undetermined date. The local authorities charged him a month ago on allegations of tax evasion and abuse of powers. These pardons have encouraged the international community to demand release of 9 journalists and bloggers still behind bars in Azerbaijan: Nijat Aliyev, Araz Guliyev, Seymur Hazi, Mehman Huseynov, Fikrat Faramazoglu, Afghan Mukhtarli, Aziz Orujov, Rashad Ramazanov and Afgan Sadigov.
(IFJ)
- Nathan VanderKlippe, a Canadian journalist was apprehended by police and government officials in northwestern China last month. VanderKlippe is the Asia Correspondent for The Globe and Mail covering the security situation of the ethnic Uighur minority in China. He has won the 2014 Amnesty International Canada award for his reporting on the Chinese government’s repression of the Uighur population VanderKlippe was detained for three hours and released after a rigorous camera search and his computer confiscation. His computer has yet to be returned to him. China has one of the most restrictive media environments in the world with up to 49 journalists and bloggers behind bars since President Xi Jinping assumed the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012.
(CJFE)
