A record 533 journalists are currently detained worldwide in 2022, setting a “new, sad record”, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
In its annual end-of-the-year round up, RSF, which publishes a data of journalists killed, detained, held hostage or missing, says After a relative respite, the number of journalists killed has also risen in 2022- to 57.
At the same time, 65 journalists are now classified as held hostage and 49 as missing.
In another new trend, women now account for nearly 15% of the detained journalists, as against only 7% five years ago.
Two of the women detained in Iran, Nilufar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, are facing a possible death penalty for helping to draw attention to the fate of Mahsa Amini, the young woman whose death has triggered a big wave of protests in Iran.
The Round-up also looks at some of the year’s most striking cases, such as that of Ivan Safronov, one of Russia’s best investigative journalists, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison, the longest jail sentence registered by RSF in 2022; and Dom Phillips, a British journalist whose dismembered body was found in a remote part of the Brazilian Amazon.
The RSF on its news letter called on journalists to commit themselves, saying “the need for our work defending journalists and the right to reliable, verified news and information is greater than ever”.