The Free Journalists Initiative (OGI) announced the Rights Violations Against Journalists Report for the first 6 months of 2019.
The report includes the following:
“The government has turned the media into a single type, like the system/regime. The government has forced almost all media organs and publishers to toe the line for their own purposes, and their polarizing, othering and targeting language was manifested in the media. During the local election campaigns, the government’s media spent every effort to manipulate the truth, but society gave them their answer at the polls on March 31 and June 23. Journalists who acted as the mouth, eyes and ears of society against all the misinformation and the bombardment of false news and defended the public’s right to correct information were resolute in defending the truth in these 6 months too, saying ‘Journalism is not a crime’. In the shadow of guns and wars that have caught our whole region in a vise, the opposition and the free media pursued news without any hesitation or breaks, carrying the ‘burden of the truth’, and refusing to leave the truth in the dark.”
OGI said it is time to march on to the truth without fear and that they will void all the pressures and attacks with an organized and resolute stance today, like yesterday.
The report stressed that journalism is not a crime and that the detentions, arrests, investigations and cases against journalists must end, demanding freedom for the 154 journalists held in prison cells.
The 6 month tally announced by the OGI report is as follows:
154 journalists are imprisoned
34 journalists were detained
11 journalists were arrested
29 journalists were investigated
8 journalists were indicted
287 journalists faced trial
41 journalists were issued a total of 119 years and 3 months in prison
22 journalists were released from prison
2 journalists were deported
1 media institution was raided.