Data from the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ — which offered a global snapshot of journalists jailed for their work as of December 1 — found China had the most media workers imprisoned.
FILE – Tourists take photos in Urumqi, in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, during a government-organized trip for foreign journalists, April 21, 2021. Nearly half of the 44 journalists imprisoned in China in 2023 are Uyghurs, a report says.
WASHINGTON —
Nearly half of the 44 journalists imprisoned in China in 2023 were Uyghurs, according to a report released Thursday.
Data from the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ — which offered a global snapshot of journalists jailed for their work as of December 1 — found China had the most media workers imprisoned.
The high proportion of Uyghurs detained in the country highlights the intersection between Beijing’s poor press freedom record and its human rights abuses against the majority-Muslim ethnic group, analysts said.
An examination of the cases of the 19 Uyghurs held showed that critics of the Chinese government often face charges of separatism and terrorism.
The academic and blogger Ilham Tohti, for instance, this week marked 10 years in custody. The scholar, who was arrested in January 2014, is serving a life sentence for so-called separatism.
In jailing him, a court cited his interviews with foreign news outlets and his work as the founder of the Xinjiang news site Uighurbiz, which authorities shuttered in 2014.
“For the Chinese government, Uyghur journalists are a dangerous group of people. They don’t want them to say anything,” said Zubayra Shamseden, who works at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, or UHRP, in Washington.
“They [Beijing] try to crack down on Uyghur journalists particularly because they want to shut the Uyghur voice off,” Shamseden told VOA.
Multiple governments, including that of the United States, have accused China of committing genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. The U.N. Human Rights Office has warned that Beijing may be perpetrating crimes against humanity against Uyghurs.
Beijing denies any wrongdoing in Xinjiang, which some Uyghurs prefer to call the Uyghur Region or East Turkistan.
Silencing critical reporters is often the goal behind journalist arrests, according to CPJ Chief Executive Jodie Ginsberg.
That tactic is seen across the global data CPJ collected on jailed journalists, with 320 held around the world.
Article source: VOA
