Towards the end of last year, I attended a talk by Sebastien Lai, the son of democracy activist and media publisher Jimmy Lai. The founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, now closed down by the Chinese government, Jimmy Lai (a British citizen) has been in jail since December 2020.
Jimmy Lai is being tried on charges of foreign collusion under a national security law, imposed three years ago by China, that has been used to quash dissent and stifle free speech in Hong Kong. His national security trial only started after he’d spent more than 1,100 days behind bars. If convicted, he could be jailed for life.
Or, rather, when he is convicted. Sebastien Lai told The Guardian that this was going to be a show trial. “They’ve made it pretty clear. No juries, three government-appointed judges, the security minister boasting of a 100% conviction rate. So in my mind they want to keep Dad in prison for as long as they want to and they’ll just write the sentences around that.”
In the talk I attended, Sebastien Lai and his father’s advocate lamented the fact that the UK government was doing nothing to secure the release of Jimmy Lai. I didn’t take notes so can’t quote him directly, but in effect he accused the UK of being afraid of speaking on behalf of one of its citizens, who had been imprisoned for exercising free speech in the service of democracy.
If a multimillionaire business tycoon such as Jimmy Lai can be violently taken out by a government for doing journalism, without apparent recourse, then imagine how vulnerable ordinary working journalists must be.
The latest report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reveals that 320 journalists were in jail on the census date of December 1 2023. That’s the second-highest number recorded by the CPJ since the census began in 1992. As the reports tells us, it’s “a disturbing barometer of entrenched authoritarianism and the vitriol of governments determined to smother independent voices”.
The worst offenders are China, with 44 journalists in jail at the time of the census, Myanmar (43) and Belarus (28). Together, they are responsible for 35.8% of jailed journalists. The other countries that make up the top 10 list are Russia (22), Vietnam (19), Iran (17), Israel (17, including the occupied Palestinian territories), Eritrea (16), Egypt (13) and Turkey (13).
It’s worth noting that in Israel’s case, all 17 journalists were arrested in the Palestinian territory of the occupied West Bank since the start of the the Israel-Gaza war. “Most are held in administrative detention, which allows Israeli authorities to hold detainees without charge on the grounds that they suspect the detainee of planning to commit a future offence.”
The CPJ has a graph of imprisoned journalists by beat. As you might expect, the biggest number (32%) are in the politics category, followed by human rights at 23%. But for those who still insist sport isn’t political, it’s surprising to note that 33 sports journalists (3%) are imprisoned.
Crackdowns on journalists can often be a proxy for attacks on minority groups, and oppressive media laws a Trojan horse for taking away the right to free speech from citizens
The most popular charge against journalists is of publishing anti-state content, a convenient catch-all that many governments — including our own — would love to sneak into law.
China, the CPJ tells us, is “ramping up the use of anti-state charges to hold journalists, with three out of the five new China cases in the CPJ’s 2023 database consisting of journalists accused of espionage, inciting separatism, or subverting state power. Many journalists charged are ethnic Uyghurs from Xinjiang, where Beijing has been accused of crimes against humanity for its mass detentions and harsh repression of the region’s mostly Muslim ethnic groups. In 2023, 19 of the 44 imprisoned were Uyghur journalists.”
That last stat is worth pausing over. Crackdowns on journalists can often be a proxy for attacks on minority groups, and oppressive media laws a Trojan horse for taking away the right to free speech from citizens in general.
In Myanmar, for example, “the country’s independent media have been devastated since the February 2021 military coup, when the junta moved swiftly to arrest journalists, shut news outlets, and force journalists into exile. Almost three years later, journalists continue to be targeted under an anti-state provision broadly used to criminalise ‘incitement’ and ‘false news’.”
To give one example of the brutality of this, last May “photojournalist Sai Zaw Thaike was arrested while covering the aftermath of the deadly Cyclone Mocha in western Myanmar and was later sentenced to 20 years in prison for sedition — the longest known prison penalty given to a reporter since the coup”.
In Belarus it’s a similar story, where the government uses extremism laws as the default weapon to jail journalists. The majority of journalists incarcerated (71%) are facing anti-state charges, with almost half serving sentences of five years or more.
Fifteen percent of journalists jailed are women; in Iran eight of the 16 jailed journalists are women, as a consequence of the coverage of the nationwide, women-led protests after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran’s “morality police”.
The countries that have the most journalists in prison are also the ones where the conditions in prison are bad. “Prisoners in China, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia and Vietnam typically faced physical and sexual abuse, overcrowding, food and water shortages, and inadequate medical care.”
And almost 30% of journalists currently in prison have health problems. “Many cannot get medications or access to doctors but their families are often reluctant to speak out for fear of reprisal against their relatives. The CPJ’s research found numerous instances where jailed journalists were denied health care, medicine, and sometimes basic necessities like heat, hot water and electricity.”
Here are two CPJ examples from Vietnam of how prison conditions are used to inflict punishment. Journalist Huynh Thuc Vy is serving two years and nine months for allegedly defacing Vietnam’s flag, and has developed a serious heart condition “that required medication that the prison would not provide”. And “prison officials stopped providing hot water to Tran Huynh Duy Thuc to prevent him from preparing instant noodles purchased in the prison cafeteria. Thuc, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence, to be followed by five years’ house arrest, for ‘activities aimed at overthrowing the government’, has staged frequent hunger strikes against poor prison conditions and had stopped eating prison food last September as part of a protest against unfair food rationing.”
Let’s not forget our own continent. The number of journalists in prison in Sub-Saharan Africa on December 1 rose to 47 from 31 in 2022 and 30 in 2021. Eritrea, with 16 journalists in jail, is the worst offender in the region, and the world’s seventh-worst jailer of journalists. “Those held in Eritrea include some of the longest known cases of journalists imprisoned around the world; none has ever been charged.”
Ethiopia has eight journalists in jail, and the CPJ’s data also reflects media crackdowns in Senegal, Zambia, Angola and Madagascar.
Without a free media, both locally and globally, the fight to protect and grow open societies is severely impeded
The CPJ’s up-to-date numbers of journalists affected in the Israel-Gaza war are extremely troubling. As of January 22, its research showed that at least 83 journalists and media workers numbered among the more than 25,000 people killed since the war began. Of these, 76 were Palestinian, four Israeli and three Lebanese. Sixteen journalists were reported injured, three were reported missing and 25 were reported arrested.
We need to look beyond the numbers, though, to fully understand the price some journalists are paying for attempting to provide people with information about the evils of their governments. Not just individuals are affected; families are targeted, and exiled journalists are harassed by authoritarian states in a phenomenon known as “transnational repression”.
The democracy advocacy NGO Freedom House “has identified 112 incidents against journalists from 2014 to 2023, spanning assault, detention, unlawful deportation, rendition and even assassination”.
You’ll be familiar with Saudi Arabia’s assassination and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, “but at least 25 other governments have targeted journalists abroad”.
Why is all this important? Whatever your stance on individual media houses or voices, without a free media, locally and globally, the fight to protect and grow open societies is severely impeded, and the causes of authoritarian and despotic governments are greatly aided. That’s why the dictators and warlords of the world are so vicious about attacking a free press, and why we should never fall for the spin that poses as state security.
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