The annual report of Reporter Without Borders (RSF) was published on Thursday, December 16. It takes stock of the number of journalists detained, killed, hostage or missing in the world. The 2021 report mentions a record in the number of jailed journalists. In all, 488 journalists are behind bars in 2021. According to the report, this is mainly the result of three dictatorial regimes: Belarus, in full repression after the contested re-election of President Lukashenko in 2020, China, especially since the wave of repression from Hong Kong, and Burma, since before the coup of February 1, the country held only two journalists, against 53 on December 1.
Of this report we must also mention the record number of female journalists detained. There is a third more than in 2020, or 60 people, including the RSF 2021 prize winner, Zhang zhan, in China. On the other hand, we also note a drop in the number of journalists killed, which has fallen for the first time below 50 since 2003, and two-thirds of these deaths are targeted assassinations, and not the result of a stray bullet in conflict zone for example.
Burma, one of the biggest prisons for journalists
Burma also joins the ranking of the five largest prisons for journalists in the world. Since the coup in Burma, detention and interrogation centers have multiplied. The typical profile of the imprisoned Burmese journalist is a man, a field reporter rather than a member of the staff, and who works in a large city, primarily Rangoon. During the early months of the coup, when protests turned into trench wars in the streets, journalists were arrested during a police charge, or spotted during the day and then arrested at their homes. Today it is too dangerous to demonstrate, journalists are abducted from their homes, and sometimes while they were hiding in secure accommodation, like Sithu Aung Myint and Htet Htet Khine, who worked among others for BBC media action and the Burmese magazine English-speaker Frontier.
On Tuesday, December 14, news broke of the death in custody of freelance journalist Soe Naing, who was arrested on Friday while taking pictures of “Day of Silence” in Yangon. A day during which the inhabitants decided to paralyze the city by staying at home to mark their opposition to the coup. RSF had also made a statement after the announcement of his death, to condemn his death following what they called “a violent interrogation”. Indeed, interrogation and detention centers in Burma are known to be places of torture where more than a hundred political opponents and civilians have been killed since the coup, but he is the first journalist to let life there. It is still too early to say whether this death marks a new stage in the junta’s violence against journalists, but the news of his death has obviously shaken the population and the media world.
Hong Kong’s national security law marks a turning point
In the category of countries with journalists in prison, China (in absolute numbers) comes first. There are 127 Chinese journalists who are currently behind bars. RSF’s record mentions that the situation in Hong Kong, once seen as a model for press freedom, has deteriorated considerably.
Since the adoption of the National Security Law, which entered into force on June 30, 2020, journalists have truly lost the great freedom they had enjoyed until then. This freedom was not complete because there were still incidents of intimidation but the adoption of this national security law really marked a turning point. Today we are in a new context where it is in fact forbidden to criticize the central authorities, that is to say the Chinese government. In one year, we have witnessed the forcibly closure of the major pro-democracy opposition newspaper the Apple Daily, upon the arrest of several of its leaders and journalists, its founder Jimmy Lai, has also been in prison for over a year. Other journalists in opposition newspapers that still exist online have resigned.
The public broadcasting service RTHK is no longer a shadow of what it used to be, and looks more and more like a propaganda medium. With all this Hong Kong fell from 18th place in the RSF ranking it occupied in the early 2000s to 80th place. RSF’s record also recalls that among the journalists imprisoned in China, 19 are women. In Hong Kong, she is notably one of the managers of the Apple Daily, a well-respected journalist in the profession, and like the two other detainees, these three journalists have been in preventive detention for several months awaiting trial. In mainland China, there is in particular the journalist Sofia Huang Xueqin, famous for her involvement in the local #MeToo movement in China and of course the journalist Zhang Zhan whose life is threatened according to her relatives. Zhang Zhan had investigated the Covid-19 epidemic in Wuhan province.