President Salome Zourabichvili says the law is ‘Russian in its essence’, but parliament is expected to overturn veto.
Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili has vetoed the “foreign influence” bill that has sparked unprecedented protests in the country and warnings from Brussels that the measure would undermine Tbilisi’s European Union aspirations.
But Zourabichvili’s veto on Saturday is likely to only delay the proposed legislation, not block it. The parliament can override the veto with an additional vote.
“Today I set a veto … on the law, which is Russian in its essence and which contradicts our constitution,” Zourabichvili said in a televised statement.
Critics have said the bill resembles Russian legislation used to silence dissent. The draft law requires non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and media outlets with more than 20 percent of their funding coming from outside Georgia to register as bodies “pursuing the interests of a foreign power”.
If they refuse to do so and to disclose sensitive information about foreign funding, they will meet a fine of 25,000 lari ($9,360), followed by additional fines of 20,000 lari ($7,490) for each month of non-compliance thereafter.
On Tuesday, Georgia’s Parliament passed the bill proposed by the Georgian Dream party, which has been in power since 2022.
The party has enough votes in the parliament to overturn the president’s veto with a simple majority.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze who belongs to the Georgian Dream, has signalled his party’s readiness to consider Zourabichvili’s proposed amendments to the law, should she lay them out in her veto document.
But Zourabichvili – who is at odds with the governing party – has ruled out the prospect of entering “false, artificial, misleading negotiations” with Georgian Dream.
The foreign agents bill has mass protests against it rattling Georgia’s capital Tbilisi for the past few weeks.
NGO and media organisations fear being forced to close if they do not comply. Eka Gigauri, head of the Georgian branch of Transparency International, the anticorruption NGO which has operated in the country for 24 years, told France24, “The implication would be that they might freeze our assets.”
Critics have argued that the draft law would limit media freedom and jeopardise the country’s bid to join the EU.
Opponents of the bill also said that the bill will move Georgia closer to Russia. The two former Soviet countries have had a strained relationship since Georgia’s independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, warned on May 1 that Georgia was “at a crossroads”.
“EU member countries are very clear that if this law is adopted it will be a serious obstacle for Georgia in its European perspective,” EU spokesman Peter Stano added.
Georgia applied to be part of the EU in 2022 and was granted candidate status in December last year.
The US has also been urging Georgia against approving the bill, saying it would be inconsistent with its stated goal to join the EU and have a relationship with NATO.
The Georgian Dream party has insisted it is committed to joining the EU, and portrays the bill as aimed at increasing the transparency of NGO funding.
As Israel devastates Gaza, Egypt has largely had to watch on with rising concern about the developments on its border.
Its border with the Palestinian enclave has been a route for aid going in and people coming out but Israel has had the ultimate say over access to the border, even if it did not have a physical presence there until last week.
And it was that move – to send Israeli troops to the Rafah border crossing – that experts believe has cemented Egypt’s belief that Israel is not taking its security and political concerns seriously, and is instead “disrespecting” them.
“The significance of this move is that it is sending a signal that Egypt is not happy with what’s happening in Gaza and how Israel is behaving,” said Nancy Okail, an expert on Egypt and the president and CEO of the Center for International Policy, even as she downplayed the effect of Egypt’s decision on the ICJ’s final verdict, labelling it a “symbolic gesture”.
Egypt has grown increasingly alarmed with Israel’s military operations in Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians from all over Gaza had sought refuge.
The takeover of the Philadelphi Corridor, which separates Egypt from Gaza, is particularly worrying for Cairo; the Egyptian parliament has warned that the Israeli military’s presence there was a violation of the Camp David Accords that brought peace between Egypt and Israel.
“The way Israel has acted in the last week and a half has been incredibly troubling for Egyptian officials,” said Erin A Snyder, a scholar of Egypt and a former professor at Texas A&M University. “They have been effectively showing disrespect for the relations that they have [with Egypt].”
Red lines crossed?
The possibility that Israel’s ultimate goal in Gaza is to force out its Palestinian population has worried Egypt since the beginning of the war in October.
Early on, Israel’s intelligence ministry drafted a paper that proposed the transfer of Gaza’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Although the Israeli government downplayed the report, Israeli politicians, including the far-right duo of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, said they supported the “voluntary” migration of Palestinians from Gaza.
The repeated suggestions have set off alarm bells in Egypt, which views any such transfer of millions of Palestinians into its territory as a red line that cannot be crossed, and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has warned Israel against any such move.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi at a news conference in Cairo, on October 25, 2023 [Christophe Ena/Pool/AFP]
“Egypt has been sounding the alarm on the destabilising prospects of an Israeli military operation in Rafah and on any military action that could result in the alleged resettlement plan that emerged out of Israel last fall,” said Hesham Sallam, a scholar on Egypt and the Middle East at Stanford University.
Israel has seemingly taken measures to assuage Egypt’s concern by instructing Palestinians in Rafah to evacuate to al-Mawasi, a coastal area to the west of Rafah, away from Egypt.
Israel claims that al-Mawasi is a “safe humanitarian zone”, but aid groups say tens of thousands of people are crammed into the area without access to adequate food or water.
“The Israelis are intent on wrapping things up in Rafah in a way that looks similar to what they did in Khan Younis, or at least eventually,” said H A Hellyer, an expert on Middle East geopolitics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Royal United Services Institute.
“That is deeply concerning to Cairo because they don’t want more escalation along the border.”
Dead end talks?
Egypt has hosted ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel, playing a critical role in mediating between the two sides, along with Qatar and the United States.
Boys watch smoke rise as Israel strikes eastern Rafah on May 13, 2024, amid Israel’s continuing war on Gaza [AFP]
However, Egypt seems frustrated with Israel’s refusal to end the war in exchange for the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza, according to Timothy Kaldas, an expert on Egypt and deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy think tank.
“The Israelis didn’t seem to take the ceasefire talks that Egypt was hosting seriously … and it’s not clear to anybody what would get Israel to agree to a ceasefire,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Egypt is probably pretty frustrated that this conflict has no end in sight.”
Two days before Israel stormed into eastern Rafah, Egypt, Qatar and the US lobbied Hamas and Israel to sign a deal. Hamas agreed to a modified version of the ceasefire proposal presented at the talks, but Israel rejected it.
Days later, Egyptian military officials cancelled a planned meeting with Israeli counterparts due to their disagreement over the Rafah operation, according to the Israeli press. “We don’t know what the meeting was supposed to be about. But certainly this move – overlapping with [joining the ICJ case] – is an indication that there is a great deal of frustration with Israel from the Egyptian side,” Sallam said.
Israeli PM Netanyahu in Jerusalem on February 18, 2024 [Ronen Zvulun/Reuters]
Another delegation of Israeli intelligence officials is said to have arrived in Cairo on Wednesday for talks with their Egyptian counterparts over Rafah.
Peace treaty in danger?
Egypt has little leverage left beyond suspending its peace treaty with Israel, a move experts believe is unlikely. That step could jeopardise the $1.6bn in US military assistance Egypt receives annually as part of the peace agreement.
“I generally doubt that there is any serious risk to the Camp David Accords,” said Kaldas. “The Egyptians benefit in a number of ways from maintaining that agreement.”
Snyder said “anything is possible”, noting that everything Israel is doing in Gaza is unprecedented. However, she does not expect Egypt to suspend the treaty either, as it is central to US regional interests.
“I feel that the US is very concerned and is working to ensure that [suspending the treaty] doesn’t happen,” she told Al Jazeera.
Snyder added that Egypt’s decision to join South Africa at the ICJ should also be seen as an attempt to pressure Israel’s strongest ally and largest weapons supplier to take action on regional security.
“This isn’t just about pressuring Israel. It’s also about pressuring the US to use its leverage towards Israel,” she told Al Jazeera.
76 years on from the Nakba, Palestinians continue to demand their right of return after they were expelled from their homes during the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. Al Jazeera’s Nada Qaddourah breaks down the situation and looks at the parallels with Israel’s current war on Gaza.
Former Australian Army lawyer David McBride has been sentenced to five years and eight months for revealing information about alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan.
Supporters of McBride have long expressed his concern that the Australian government was more interested in punishing him for revealing information about war crimes rather than the alleged perpetrators.
“It is a travesty that the first person imprisoned in relation to Australia’s war crimes in Afghanistan is not a war criminal but a whistleblower,” said Rawan Arraf, the executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, in a statement released after the sentencing.
“This is a dark day for Australian democracy,” Kieran Pender, the acting legal director of the Melbourne-based Human Rights Law Centre, said in the same statement, noting McBride’s imprisonment would have “a grave chilling effect on potential truth-tellers”.
McBride, who arrived at the Supreme Court in Canberra, Australia this morning with his pet dog and surrounded by supporters, will remain behind bars until at least August 13, 2026, before he is eligible for parole.
In an interview with Al Jazeera before his trial began last year, McBride said he had never made a secret of sharing the files.
“What I want to be discussed is whether or not I was justified in doing so,” McBride stressed.
The former Australian Army lawyer’s sentencing comes almost seven years after Australian public broadcaster, the ABC, published a series of seven articles known as the Afghan Files based on information McBride provided.
McBride has attracted support from Australian human rights advocates, journalists and politicians who fear his sentencing has consequences for freedom of speech [Mick Tsikas/EPA-EFE/]
The series led to an unprecedented Australian Federal Police raid on ABC headquarters in June 2019 but details published in the series were also later confirmed in an Australian government inquiry, which found there was credible evidence to support allegations war crimes had been committed.
A Spokesperson for the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI) told Al Jazeera that a former Australian Special Forces soldier who was charged with one count of the war crime of murder on March 20, 2023, is on bail with a mention scheduled for July 2, 2024.
“This is the first war crime arrest resulting from [joint investigations between the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI) and the Australian Federal Police]”, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said the investigations were “very complex” and “expected to take a significant amount of time” but that they were conducting them as “thoroughly and expeditiously as possible”.
In a separate case last year, an Australian judge found Australia’s most decorated soldier Ben Roberts-Smith was “complicit in and responsible for the murder” of three Afghan men while on deployment. The finding was made in defamation proceedings brought by Roberts-Smith against three Australian newspapers who had reported on the allegations against him.
Roberts-Smith has appealed against the defamation ruling.
‘Greyer, murkier, messier’
McBride’s sentencing comes four months after Dan Oakes, one of two ABC journalists who wrote the Afghan Files, was awarded an Order of Australia Medal, with the citation simply saying he was recognised “for service to journalism”.
Oakes was quoted by the ABC at the time as saying, “I’m very proud of the work we did with the Afghan Files and I know that it did have a positive effect in that it helps bring some of this conduct to light.
“If [this medal] is at least partly due to that reporting then I do feel some sense of satisfaction.”
But Oakes, who has reportedly not spoken to McBride in six years, later told the ABC’s Four Corners programme that the story was “much greyer and murkier and messier than people appreciate”.
While Oakes and McBride have not stayed in touch, the whistleblower has attracted the support of a wide range of Australians, including human rights lawyers, senators and journalists.
Ben Roberts-Smith was ‘complicit in and responsible for the murder’ of three Afghan men, an Australian judge found in 2023 [Dan Himbrechts/EPA]
On Tuesday, supporters gathered outside the court, with speakers on McBride’s behalf including Australian Greens Senator David Shoebridge.
It would be “an indelible stain on the Albanese Labor government” if McBride “walks into the Supreme Court this morning” and is then “taken out the back to jail”, Shoebridge said before the sentencing hearing.
In a joint statement from several Australians issued after the hearing, Peter Greste, the executive director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, said that “press freedom relies on protections for journalists and their sources”. He also noted that Australia had recently dropped to 39th in the global press freedom rankings.
Greste is a former Al Jazeera reporter who was jailed with two colleagues in Egypt from 2013 to 2015 on national security charges brought by the Egyptian government.
“As someone who was wrongly imprisoned for my journalism in Egypt, I am outraged about David McBride’s sentence on this sad day for Australia,” said Greste.
McBride is one of several Australians facing punishment for revealing information, while high-profile Australian Julian Assange will face hearings on his potential extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States later this month.
Palestinian emergency workers continue to uncover mass graves in and around three hospitals in the Gaza Strip, months after Israeli forces laid siege to them, claiming they were being used as Hamas command centres.
More than 500 bodies have been recovered with Palestinian officials saying several of them showed signs of mutilation and torture amounting to war crimes. Israel’s military has rejected the allegations as “baseless”, saying the bodies were buried by Palestinians during the fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas in the area.
The United Nations, the United States and the European Union have called for an independent investigation to determine the truth and ensure accountability. UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: “It’s important that all forensic evidence be well preserved.”
But as Israel intensifies its assault on the southern city of Rafah, having closed the crossing into Egypt and preventing any possible deployment of forensic teams or equipment into Gaza, burial sites are being dug up and evidence haphazardly collected.
Experts said the disturbance of sites where proof of war crimes might lie will make the search for truth harder – yet not all hopes for justice are lost.
How is evidence being collected from the mass graves?
Three mass graves have been found at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, three at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and one at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya.
Mohammad Zaanin, a member of the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza, told Al Jazeera on Thursday that a fourth gravesite containing 42 bodies had been found at al-Shifa Hospital. The bodies were decomposed and unrecognisable, but some had IDs on them or were identified by relatives from clothing remnants.
Civil Defence teams have been documenting the remains through photos and videos, working with little protective gear and no forensic equipment. “We have some body bags and a little equipment to protect our hands and noses, but in reality, this is a local effort, and it puts a lot of pressure on our team,” Zaanin said.
Thani Nimr Abdel Rahman, who works with the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp and has visited the burial sites at al-Shifa Hospital, said she witnessed the ground being excavated using bulldozers.
Before the dead are reburied at a new site, relatives of the missing search for pieces of clothing around the remains for a sign of their loved ones. At times, the corpses have been left unattended. “The dogs came to devour the bodies, and the smell was deadly,” Abdel Rahman told Al Jazeera. “[This work] requires more capabilities and forensic experts, none of which are available in Gaza.”
Has evidence of war crimes been found?
Several Civil Defence members have claimed to have found evidence of ill treatment, including torture, extrajudicial executions and unlawful killings of noncombatants that could amount to war crimes.
Rami Dababesh, a member of the Civil Defence team who took part in the exhumation work at al-Shifa Hospital, told Al Jazeera that his team had found “headless corpses”. Paramedic Adel al-Mashharawi said he saw bodies of children and women dressed in hospital garments.
Civil Defence member Mohammed Mughier said at least 10 of the bodies had been found with bound hands while others still had medical tubes attached to them. He added that additional forensic examination was needed on about 20 bodies of people who they suspect had been “buried alive”.
Yamen Abu Sulaiman, the head of the Civil Defence in Khan Younis, said some of the bodies found at the Nasser Medical Complex had been “stacked together” and showed indications of field executions having taken place. At least 392 bodies were recovered at this site alone.
Is the evidence gathered reliable?
Mass grave investigations are typically a highly complex, lengthy and expensive process, requiring significant expertise and resources. The overarching operating principle underpinning the forensic scientific approach is “do no harm” because interference with the site may prejudice the evidence.
“The first reaction from pretty much everyone is to dig the bodies up because it’s a very emotional thing,” Stefan Schmitt, a forensic scientist at Florida International University who has investigated mass graves in multiple conflicts, told Al Jazeera.
“But bodies are safer underground when it comes to identifying them and determining what happened. Particularly in this case, where the truth is so incredibly important and where all sides are propagating their own version of the events, it’s especially important to be able to determine what really took place.”
Digging up bodies, especially using invasive methods such as bulldozers, wipes out clues that could help determine responsibility and archaeological evidence that could reveal when a grave was dug and with what tools, Schmitt said.
Every exhumation also scatters evidence as decomposing body parts are left behind in the original burial site. Once a corpse is moved and reburied, information on where it came from can be lost.
Inaccurate information may also be added as part of the documentation process. Schmitt said misidentification by grieving relatives who are psychologically inclined to want closure is frequent in the context of war. Claims of bodies having been decapitated or buried alive were also hard to back up without autopsies being carried out.
Photographic and video evidence alone may not be sufficient to remedy confusion. For visual evidence to be viewed as reliable, a chain of custody must be ensured, Schmitt said.
The process of documentation must give a clear sense of the exhumation process both spatially and in regards to timing with pictures containing information including metadata and geolocation taken in a sequence. Shots must be framed to feature landmarks before zooming in on the details. The information is then methodically collected in a spreadsheet, from which each entry is hyperlinked to the relevant visual data.
“I have been shown pictures that came from Gaza, but I couldn’t see the chain of custody. I don’t know where they’re coming from,” Schmitt said, adding that this means he has consequently unable to give an expert opinion on what they show.
“What is happening right now is destroying evidence. I know that that’s not deliberate, but it plays into the hands of those that don’t want the truth to be told.”
Can international organisations help?
The UN has called for “a clear, transparent and credible investigation” of mass graves in Gaza. The EU backed the call, saying the discovery of bodies at the hospitals “creates the impression that there might have been violations of international human rights” while the US said it wanted the matter to be “thoroughly and transparently investigated”.
It is unclear which organisation would heed the call, or who in the future might take up the hefty task of investigating.
UN human rights spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told Al Jazeera the international body was not providing support in evidence gathering at burial sites in Gaza “because it requires specific expertise that does not exist on the ground”.
Is there any hope of justice for victims?
As the Rafah border crossing with Egypt remains closed, the prospects of foreign investigators being sent in to investigate allegations of war crimes appear slim.
However, not all hope for justice is lost. “What you have got, as opposed to what you haven’t got, might itself be extremely revealing,” said Geoffrey Nice, a British barrister who led the prosecution in the trial of Serbian politician Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
“Because you haven’t got it all doesn’t mean you haven’t got enough,” Nice told Al Jazeera about forensic scientific evidence.
In the former Yugoslavia, remains were dug up for decades, and DNA testing ensured identification even many years after the events. “Efforts on identification never end, and there is a huge body of evidence. Never worry about what you haven’t got. Use what you have got,” the barrister added.
Evidence gathered at the mass graves could point to specific offences or be merged into a broader inquiry into war crimes. An unbiased judiciary and investigatory organisation may be set up, but this will take decades of work and cost a large sum of money, requiring the support of wealthy countries.
According to Nice, should a tribunal for Gaza be set up, “it would not be sensible to have participating members from any countries that supported Israel with weapons.”
“The Israel-Gaza conflict is hopelessly sensitive. The funding body, be it the EU or someone else, has got to be prepared after having funded it to have absolutely no further engagement except when asked,” he added.
Is justice being pursued elsewhere?
Legal proceedings are also already ongoing at top courts. The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is overseeing an active investigation into the atrocities on October 7 by Hamas and the response by the Israeli military. The office of the prosecutor has jurisdiction in the Palestinian territories but has not made any public comments about the discovery of mass graves.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), a separate court, is considering a case brought by South Africa in which Israel stands accused of committing genocide in Gaza. It will take several years to reach a verdict, during which time, the court is expected to investigate a litany of alleged offences.
Among key provisional measures issued to prevent the crime of genocide, the ICJ ordered Israeli authorities to “take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence” related to the allegations. It also ordered unimpeded access to humanitarian aid, which humanitarian organisations said has been blocked since the offensive in Rafah began.
“If the general conclusion of any court is that what is going on in Gaza is beyond the limits of warfare, then it is not difficult to track the chain of command back to the top,” Nice said.
Then, the barrister added, “you can start to see if there is individual responsibility.”
Sub-Saharan African refugees and migrants fleeing northwards away from war, conflict and corrupt governments are ending up trapped in Tunisia, unable to move on to Europe or return home.
Across Tunisia, signs of growing hostility towards these arrivals are apparent.
The thousands living in makeshift camps are under pressure from a frustrated population and a government that analysts say is out of options.
On Friday, security forces raided two temporary camps and a protest site in the capital, Tunis, forcing more than 500 refugees onto buses to the Algerian border where they were abandoned. Some others may have been expelled to Libya.
The Refugees in Libya organisation described a wretched journey for the asylum seekers, many travelling with infants, who were refused help from hostile people in Tunisia and blocked from accessing transport back to Tunis.
Outside Sfax, 278km (172 miles) south of Tunis on the coast, thousands of sub-Saharan Africans, many of them registered refugees, shelter in open fields, attacked by security services and residents.
Refugees in Libya shared a video of 400 refugees and migrants they said had been seized from Sfax, as well as some from the Tunis camps, being expelled to Libya on May 2. The only indication the NGO has of what happened to them is a message it received on Tuesday originating from Libya’s al-Assa prison, 19km (12 miles) from the border.
👀a footage recorded on May 2, 2024 at the border region of Libya-Tunisia shows the exchange of migrants and refugees caught at gunpoint from Sfax and Tunis.
This practice of state-to-state human trafficking have been happening since July last year.
— Refugees In Libya (@RefugeesinLibya) May 4, 2024
On Monday, Tunisia’s President Kais Saied confirmed the expulsion to the National Security Council, blaming unnamed “others” for the migration crisis before lambasting “traitors” who had allowed them to enter Tunisia.
Competition for limited resources
Living standards in Tunisia are falling, with its own migration statistics testament to a lack of hope.
The high unemployment that caused its 2011 revolution remains, while an estimated 17 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
Some 17,000 irregular Tunisian arrivals landed in Italy in 2023, many from working-class areas where refugees stay, like the industrial areas around Sfax where finding casual labour can be the difference between eating or not.
There, Tunisians find themselves competing with refugees and migrants for diminishing resources.
There has also been a surge in suspicion of outsiders, echoed in Saied’s rhetoric and press attacks on “foreign” NGOs such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, telling the public to distrust them for their international links and blaming them for the “disruptive” refugee presence.
Public figures, including Member of Parliament Badreddine Gammoudi, are also calling for the establishment of citizen militias to fight the “conspiracy” of “suspicious entities” looking to “settle refugees and migrants in Tunisia”.
“Tensions are rising across Tunisia,” Hamza Meddeb, of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said. “We’re seeing the beginning of citizen militias and an angry public attacking the migrants. Something’s going to give … it’s inevitable. Tunisia has basically become a trap for migrants,” he said.
Ce qui se passe actuellement à Sfax est honteux. Le pire, c’est que l’État et les prétendus politiciens sont tous complices. Rappelons que la Tunisie compte plus de 12 000 réfugiés, majoritairement en Italie, où ils sont traités avec dignité. pic.twitter.com/EHA7pNKsDC
In Sfax, citizens have attacked refugees with fireworks and in the farming and fishing town of al-Amra, they protested against refugees sheltering on farmland, saying farmers needed it to feed their families.
Channelling public suspicions, Saied paints Tunisia as a victim of a conspiracy to overrun it with refugees.
At a Tunisian National Security Council meeting on Monday, he accused “traitors” of receiving millions to do that, claiming to have seen a document “proving” more than 20 million dinars ($6.4m) from an unnamed organisation were being funnelled unofficially for a migrant centre in Sfax.
(Al Jazeera)
Dangerous – but impossible to return home
A common refrain in Tunisia is for Black refugees and migrants to be deported to their countries of origin.
The IOM estimates some 15,000 people are camped in olive groves outside Sfax. The UNHCR said it registered 11,535 refugees between January 2023 and April of this year, bringing the total number in the country to 16,500.
Many are likely sleeping in the fields outside Sfax, or near Zarzis on the Libya border and various other points.
It is uncomfortable and dangerous, but for many, going home is simply not possible.
Salahadin, 26, a former nurse in Sudan, told Al Jazeera in March of leaving El Geneina in West Darfur in August. Returning to Sudan was not an option.
“They [the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group] killed my people, my family, all of them … killed,” he said flatly.
Abdul, 24, who had worked in the mines of Sierra Leone from the age of eight alongside his father, had a similarly tragic story.
“I saw a lot of the white people there,” he said, describing Lebanese, Israelis and Americans who went to Sierra Leone for its diamonds, gold and cobalt. “I worked with the slaves,” he said. “A lot of child slaves.”
“I saw them [the mine owners] kill people,” he said. “They have this tradition where they kill someone and bury them in the bank. It’s good luck.”
Waters calm as summer approaches
Meddeb of the Carnegie Center said public feeling would not allow Saied to settle migrants at the camp. “Public feeling wouldn’t allow for it. He can’t expel them, either … all he can do is push them around the country and make life difficult for them,” he said.
As the numbers of refugees and migrants increase in Tunisia, the waters between Africa and Europe are calming as summer approaches and passage north becomes easier. Irregular migration will return to the top of the European political agenda.
Italy and the European Union consistently try to externalise their migration concerns to Tunisia and Libya, urging each to halt the flow of desperate people from their shores.
“That migration is thought to be a destabilising force within Europe appears to have become a widely accepted truth, both within Europe and elsewhere,” Ahlam Chemlali, a researcher in migration and externalisation at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said.
“However, there are other factors at work here. We have European [Commission and Parliament] elections coming up and … we’re seeing hardline parties challenging for power in France and Germany, as well as that already governing in Italy. All of them want to deflect from their own problems and be seen as being tough on migration,” she said.
In mid-April, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, with a large ministerial delegation, made a fourth visit in less than a year to Tunisia to conclude deals she later said were hallmarks of her Mattei Plan – partnerships with African states on energy transfers in return for them preventing irregular migration.
In March, the Financial Times reported that the EU was to make 165 million euros ($177m) available to Tunis over three years to help limit migration – far more than the figure the bloc had previously publicly admitted to.
On Thursday, Tunisia’s Interior Minister Kamal Feki met with his counterparts from Libya, Algeria and Italy in Rome to discuss migration. The outcome, while officially unknown, appears to be the destruction of the makeshift camps and border transfers to Libya.
The increased tension in Tunisia is the result of this politicking, Chemlali said. “These are the consequences of border externalisation policies, which de facto are trapping thousands of people within Tunisia, while reinforcing the president’s racialised attacks on migrants and encouraging his deepening authoritarianism.”
Tunisia’s financial difficulties are worsened by Saied refusing to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund, whose requirement of economic reforms he dismissed as “diktats”. Instead, he relies on loans and aid packages from the EU and Arab states to paper over the cracks in the subsidy-reliant economy.
Algeria, in particular, has emerged as a source of both financial support and energy for Tunisia.
“Tunisia has become a diplomatic minnow under Saied,” Meddeb continued. “He’s ideologically and financially subservient to Algeria and Europe. He relies entirely upon Algeria for gas and financial aid,” he said, referring to a $300m loan from Algeria in December.
“If Algeria cuts Tunisia’s gas, it could last on its own for around 24 hours. That’s it. If Algeria wants to push its irregular migrants out, as it appears to, it can direct them back to Niger or, increasingly, into Tunisia.”
Anecdotal reports suggest Algerian security patrols are driving intercepted refugees to the border and telling them to follow old mining tracks into Tunisia and to not return.
Protesters demonstrate outside the European Union delegation in Tunis over the bloc’s externalisation policies (Al Jazeera)
Dead end
Tunisia’s position at the northernmost tip of Africa means it was always likely to be a dead end for the hopes of those fleeing from across the continent.
Conflict in Sudan has displaced 7.5 million people. Coups, the devastating effects of global warming, and intense competition for remaining resources have displaced 13.6 million people this year across Central and West Africa.
What this means to the 30 or so expelled people that the Refugees in Libya NGO are still searching for is uncertain. They are lost in Tunisia’s north.
According to the organisation, trains have barred them from boarding and shopkeepers have refused to serve them, scared of rumours that helping Black refugees has been criminalised.
With no alternative, the men, women and children have resorted to sleeping in caves.
They continue to walk. There isn’t much else they can do.
United Nations says the number displaced has jumped by 50 percent in last six months as fighting has intensified.
The number of people in Myanmar forced from their homes by conflict now exceeds more than 3 million in what the United Nations has described as a “bleak milestone” for the country.
The UN said the number displaced had surged by 50 percent in the last six months as fighting escalated between the military and armed groups trying to remove the generals who seized power in a coup in February 2021.
“Myanmar has this week marked a bleak milestone with more than 3 million civilians now displaced nationwide amid intensifying conflict,” the office of the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Myanmar said in a statement on Monday.
“Myanmar stands at the precipice in 2024 with a deepening humanitarian crisis that has spiraled since the military takeover in February 2021 and the consequent conflicts in many parts of the country, driving record numbers of people to abandon their homes seeking safety.”
Of the 3 million internally displaced people, more than 90 percent fled as a result of the conflict triggered by the coup, the UN added.
About half of the displaced are in the northwestern regions of Chin, Magway and Sagaing, with more than 900,000 in the southeast. About 356,000 people live in the western state of Rakhine where a brutal military crackdown in 2017 prompted more than 750,000 mostly Muslim Rohingya to flee into neighbouring Bangladesh.
Myanmar was plunged into crisis when Senior General Min Aung Hlaing seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, which led to mass protests that evolved into an armed uprising when the military responded with brutal force.
Fighting has intensified since the end of October last year when ethnic armed groups allied with anti-coup fighters launched a major offensive in northern Shan and western Rakhine states overrunning dozens of military outposts and taking control of several key towns near the border with China.
In recent weeks, the military has also been battling with ethnic Karen groups for control of Myawaddy, a major trade hub on the border with Thailand.
The UN said the deepening conflict meant that some 18.6 million people in Myanmar were now in need of humanitarian assistance, 1 million more than in 2023.
But it said efforts to reach those in need were being hampered by “gross underfunding”. It said it had so far received less than 5 percent of the funds it needed for humanitarian operations.
“With cyclone season fast approaching, additional resources are needed now to protect the most vulnerable and save lives,” the statement said.
Last year, UN human rights chief Volker Turk accused the military of preventing life-saving humanitarian aid from reaching people in need by creating a web of legal, bureaucratic and financial hurdles.
The generals, who have been accused of launching air attacks on civilians and burning villages to the ground, have ignored a five-point peace plan that it agreed to with fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in April 2021, under which it was supposed to end the violence.
Nearly 5,000 people have been killed by the military since the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which has been tracking the situation. More than 20,000 people are in detention, while Aung San Suu Kyi is serving a combined 27-year sentence after a secret trial in a military court.
Tunis, Tunisia – Teams of refuse workers are busy in the deserted alleyway outside the International Organization for Migration (IOM) offices in Tunis. A nearby park stands empty.
In both, large piles of refuse are the only evidence of the hundreds of sub-Saharan African refugees and migrants who sheltered here until recently.
In the early hours of Friday morning, police swept into both camps, plus a protest site outside the offices of the UNHCR a few miles distant, clearing them of the shelters erected there and bundling the men, women and children onto municipal buses to the Algerian border.
The Refugees in Libya organisation claims they were taken off the buses near the border town of Jendouba – whose governorate borders Algeria – where they were left without food or water to fend for themselves.
The raids in Tunis are the latest example of an increasingly hostile environment taking hold in Tunisia. One where irregular sub-Saharan African arrivals, their numbers swelling by the day, find themselves attacked by both security services and politicians, forced to shelter in open fields while increasingly vulnerable to kidnapping and ransom.
Who they are
There are currently tens of thousands of irregular sub-Saharan African arrivals sheltering in Tunisia, nearly all hoping to continue their months-long journeys on to Europe.
🚨Ongoing mass desert dumping by the Tunisian authorities.
Yesterday at approximately 3 am, multiple police forces including special riot control and anti-terrorism units dismantled the protest camp outside the UNHCR office in the Lac zone of Tunis. Hundreds of refugees and… pic.twitter.com/5uaYxDmR75
— Refugees In Libya (@RefugeesinLibya) May 3, 2024
Total numbers are impossible to confirm. However, the IOM estimates that about 15,000 may be living in the fields near the coastal city of Sfax after police ejected them from the centre in September.
Some have returned to the outskirts of the city, squatting in the working-class districts close to the rail tracks. More shelter in the fields near Zarzis, close to the Libyan border, clustering around the UNHCR office in hopes of securing refugee accreditation and a degree of protection in a country that offers none.
Some 550 were estimated to have been living rough in Tunis at the time of Friday’s police raid. Outside the offices of the IOM, many families had sheltered in structures of timber and tarpaulin. Among them were a large number of children and newborn babies, including Freedom, a four-month-old boy born in Tunisia to a Nigerian mother, Gift.
“I named him that because I need freedom,” she had told Al Jazeera, “I need to know freedom. There is no freedom for us,” she says.
Gift had entered the country last summer through Libya, where a militia patrolling the desert had taken her prisoner, holding her for seven months before her family in Nigeria could raise her ransom.
Gift and Freedom’s location is currently unknown.
Cleanup crews clearing the alleyway by the IOM office in Tunis on May 3, 2024 [Al Jazeera]
Unwanted
Conditions in the fields near Sfax are dire, 37-year-old Richard from Ghana said.
Violent police raids and surveillance have grown more frequent and disease has gradually taken hold in a community deprived of medical care. The fear of arrest and deportation to the desert borders with Libya and Algeria is ubiquitous.
“Conditions there are bad. Very, very bad,” Richard said.
He had returned from Sfax to the fragile security of the IOM camp in Tunis a week earlier.
“I am sick, you can see. My body hurts,” he said. “I have to go to hospital but they give you no assistance. In Sfax, it is very difficult.”
He gestured to his friend Solomon, 36, who was coughing: “My brother here is really sick. He’s been coughing for some time,” he said.
“I started to cough three days ago. All my body hurts. Lots of people at the camp had the same symptoms,” Solomon said.
On top of the spread of disease is the ongoing threat from the police. Camps around Sfax where the undocumented shelter offer no protection from police surveillance, which has taken to the skies recently.
“I saw the drones,” Solomon says. “I was at Kilometre 31. They were going up and down,” he says, waving his hand above his head.
Tear gas canisters from Al Amrah, near Sfax, Tunisia 23-25 April 2024 [Courtesy of Richard]
Richard joins in, he had been at Kilometre 34, names given to the informal camps based on their distance from Sfax centre. He describes a raid last month where the refugees were able to film the police burning tents and firing tear gas.
“The police came and burned the tents,” Richard explains, showing the video of the raid on his phone. “I don’t know why they did it,” he says.
But this is just one of what have become commonplace raids for those living in the fields around Sfax, shut off from the world by a police force that seeks to block access from NGOs and prying journalists.
Both Richard and Solomon subsequently told Al Jazeera that they were away from the Tunis camps at the time of the police raid.
Kidnapped
With much of the sub-Saharan African refugee community existing in an official vacuum, a trade in kidnapping has been growing since at least the end of last year.
In Tunis, huddled on a broken sofa that, like the shelters surrounding it, was subsequently swept up in the raid, three Sierra Leoneans spoke of having been held and tortured on arriving in Sfax from Algeria.
Tunisia Is Not Safe. Please We Want To Leave Before🇹🇳Election. Many Woman,Breastfeeding Mum And Kids Have To Sleep Out Until Their Parents,Guidance Able To Fix Their Plastic Houses. European Migration Policy Keep Enslaves,Kill,Rape,Exploitation In Our Own Continent.🇹🇳🇪🇺Are Killer https://t.co/S9ULWrwguupic.twitter.com/mMZCL4Sfqp
They were held prisoner by an unknown number of Francophones, their guess was Cameroonians, after being “sold” to them by the Tunisian smugglers they had already paid 600 euros ($644) to.
“They beat us with plastic pipes. One, he gets a bottle and burns it, so the plastic falls on us,” 29-year-old Hassan said.
His friend, 34-year-old Izzi from Freetown, took up the story: “They make us call our families. I phone my wife in Sierra Leone. I am supposed to be earning money for her and our three children. We all phone.
“We transfer the money. They leave us with nothing. They take our phones, everything.”
Accounts of kidnapping, torture and trafficking are rife among the sub-Saharan African refugee community. In March, the practice was called out, by a group of 27 international and national NGOs, including the regional office of Lawyers Without Borders, who said the prevalence of kidnapping was the outcome of official attitudes towards migration.
Determining how prevalent the trade is – like trying to count overall arrivals – when both victim and trafficker rely upon secrecy, is like trying to place one’s finger on liquid mercury.
“There have been escalating reports of such practices since the end of last year, primarily in Sfax, where migrants are kidnapped by other migrants, or in conjunction with Tunisian smugglers,” Romdhane Ben Amor, communications officer for the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, said.
“They are then held against their will in apartments or houses.”
Ce qui se passe actuellement à Sfax est honteux. Le pire, c’est que l’État et les prétendus politiciens sont tous complices. Rappelons que la Tunisie compte plus de 12 000 réfugiés, majoritairement en Italie, où ils sont traités avec dignité. pic.twitter.com/EHA7pNKsDC
Translation: What is currently happening in Sfax is shameful. The worst part is that the state and so-called politicians are all complicit. Remember that #Tunisia has more than 12,000 refugees, mainly in Italy, where they are treated with dignity.
The situation deteriorated since authorities expelled undocumented sub-Saharan refugees to the fields outside Sfax, Ben Amor continued.
In April, journalists for French newspaper Liberation reported on a police raid on a three-storey building in a working-class district of Sfax, where sub-Saharan African refugees and migrants were ordered onto the roof by their Black kidnappers and instructed to threaten to jump should the police approach.
Vilified
Encouraged by a government that analysts typically characterise as authoritarian operating in tandem with a largely pliant media, many within Tunisia are venting their frustrations over tanking living standards, shrinking freedoms and endemic unemployment in the Black refugee and migrant community.
In Sfax, local MP Fatma Mseddi has channelled much of that anger, petitioning to have irregular arrivals deported and pushing a law intended to hobble the international NGOs she blames for supporting them.
A suggestion from a Tunisian NGO to shelter some of the refugees and migrants in a hotel has already been attacked within the press with the organisation’s national credentials questioned.
On the ground, community Facebook groups focus that anger while ignoring from their own contribution to the overall migration numbers. 17,322 Tunisian nationals made the journey to Italy without paperwork last year.
However, with no long-term solution in sight, Tunisia continues to punish refugees and migrants for their presence.
How four-month-old Freedom and the other children of the Tunis encampments may be responsible for their homelessness and destitution is unknown.
The British authorities have begun a series of operations to detain migrants in preparation for their deportation to Rwanda as part of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s flagship immigration policy.
The UK Home Office, which oversees immigration matters in the United Kingdom, released a video on Wednesday showing armed immigration officers handcuffing individuals at their homes and escorting them into deportation vans.
In a statement, it announced a “series of nationwide operations” ahead of the first deportations to begin in the next nine to 11 weeks. Interior minister James Cleverly said enforcement teams were “working at pace to swiftly detain those who have no right to be here so we can get flights off the ground”.
Last month, Parliament approved a controversial law – known as the Safety of Rwanda Bill – that allows for asylum seekers who arrive illegally in Britain to be deported to Rwanda, even after the UK Supreme Court declared the policy unlawful last year.
Sunak, who is expected to call an election later this year, said the flagship immigration policy seeks to deter people from crossing the English Channel in small boats and to tackle the issue of people-smuggling gangs.
Unions and human rights charities have expressed dismay at the wave of arrests so far. While some have succeeded in blocking transfers to removal centres, they say it is becoming increasingly difficult to bring legal action.
Who is being targeted by the campaign of mass arrests?
The Home Office has announced it is carrying out arrests within an initial cohort of about 5,700 men and women who arrived in the UK without prior permission between January 2022 and June 2023. Those who fall within this group have been sent a “notice of intent” stating that they are being considered for deportation to Rwanda.
However, it was revealed this week that government data shows that the Home Office has lost contact with thousands of potential deportees, with only 2,143 “located for detention” so far. More than 3,500 are unaccounted for, with some thought to have fled across the Northern Irish border into Ireland. Others include people who have failed to attend mandatory appointments with the UK authorities. Ministers have insisted enforcement teams will find them.
Several asylum seekers who did attend compulsory appointments with the UK authorities as part of their application for asylum this week have been arrested and told they will be sent to Rwanda.
Fizza Qureshi, CEO of the charity Migrants’ Rights Network, told Al Jazeera that “people are forced to go and report in these Home Office centres and once they are there, there is no guarantee that they’ll come out free”.
The government has not provided exact figures for the number of arrests conducted since the operation started on Monday, but detentions have been reported across the UK in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and in cities including Bristol, Liverpool, Birmingham and Glasgow.
Maddie Harris, founder of the UK-based Humans for Rights Network, told Al Jazeera that asylum seekers from war-torn countries including Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria and Eritrea with no connection to Rwanda are being arrested as part of the scheme.
One of the organisation’s clients, a young woman who has been in the UK for almost two years, was arrested as part of the crackdown. “She is absolutely terrified,” Harris said, adding that while the young woman has no connection to Rwanda, she was told she would be deported to the Eastern African country.
According to Humans for Rights Network, individuals who have filled out a Home Office questionnaire over the past two years were also being arrested. The organisation said it had initially believed completing the form indicated that the client had been admitted into the UK asylum system and could not be deported.
That assumption has been proven false and “that’s very concerning”, Harris said.
How is the arrest campaign affecting the people being targeted?
Rights groups, including Migrants’ Rights Network, have been successful in blocking the transfer of some people to removal centres in several cases, but Qureshi said it required “24/7 resistance” for each individual case.
Qureshi added that the arrests have had a chilling effect, pushing asylum seekers to evade authorities and into exploitative situations. “Raids push people underground and away from support systems,” she said. “There is no safe option for people and that has been made clear.”
Natasha Tsangarides, associate director of advocacy at Freedom from Torture, said detentions run the risk of rekindling pre-existing trauma in people who were subject to torture or ill-treatment, while also driving them away from support systems.
“Clinicians who work with torture survivors every day in our therapy rooms have recognised that many will experience re-traumatisation even with a very short time in detention,” Tsangarides said, adding that this would deteriorate trauma symptoms.
“Not only does this legislation place people at risk of harm if they are sent to Rwanda, but it spreads such terror in the community that we worry people may go underground to avoid taking any risk.”
The UK government has not ruled out sending survivors of torture to Rwanda.
Could legal action stop the deportations?
The ruling Conservative party’s plan to deport immigrants who have entered the UK without permission to Rwanda has faced more than two years of legal hurdles and political wrangling between the two houses of Parliament.
In June 2022, the first flight taking refugees to Rwanda was stopped at the last minute by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Last year, the UK Supreme Court declared the deportation scheme unlawful on the basis that the government could not guarantee the safety of migrants once they had arrived in Rwanda.
The Safety of Rwanda Bill, which was passed on April 23, circumvented the Supreme Court ruling by designating the East African country as a safe destination, paving the way for deportations to begin.
The Illegal Migration Act, which became law in July 2023, also stated that anyone who arrives in the UK on small boats will be prevented from claiming asylum, detained and then deported either back to their homelands or to a third country, such as Rwanda.
Jonathan Featonby, chief policy analyst at Refugee Council, told Al Jazeera that both legislations severely limit the ability of people to challenge their removal to Rwanda through the courts.
Under the plan, asylum seekers arriving illegally in the UK can be sent to Rwanda to be processed within the East African country’s legal system and will not be able to return to the UK.
“In reality, people’s ability to continue that challenge and get the support they need to go through that process is severely limited,” Featonby said. “There are some legal organisations coming together to make sure they can provide legal support and challenge both individual cases and the legislation itself, but it is quite unclear how successful those challenges will be.”
The senior civil servants’ union FDA on Wednesday submitted an application for a judicial review against the government’s Rwanda plan, arguing that it leaves its members at risk of breaching international law if they follow a minister’s demands.
Featonby said appeals can also be filed at the European Court of Human Rights, “but that will take time and it will likely not prevent someone from being removed to Rwanda in the meantime”.
“Not only is the legislation dehumanising people coming to the UK to seek protection, but it is shutting down the asylum process,” he added.
“We are calling for the whole plan and the Illegal Migration Act to be scrapped and for the government to run a fair, efficient and humane asylum system.”
Every year on May 3, UNESCO commemorates World Press Freedom Day.
It is being marked today at a particularly perilous time for journalists globally, with Israel’s war on Gaza becoming the deadliest conflict for journalists and media workers.
“When we lose a journalist, we lose our eyes and ears to the outside world. We lose a voice for the voiceless,” Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement today.
“World Press Freedom Day was established to celebrate the value of truth and to protect the people who work courageously to uncover it.”
Deadliest period for journalists in Gaza
More than 100 journalists and media workers, the vast majority Palestinian, have been killed in the first seven months of war in Gaza, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).
Gaza’s media office has the number at more than 140 killed, which averages to five journalists killed every week since October 7.
Since the start of the war, at least 34,596 Palestinians have been killed and 77,816 others injured in Gaza. More than 8,000 others are missing, buried under the rubble.
“Gaza’s reporters must be protected, those who wish must be evacuated, and Gaza’s gates must be opened to international media.” Jonathan Dagher, Head of RSF’s Middle East desk said in a statement in April.
“The few reporters who have been able to leave bear witness to the same terrifying reality of journalists being attacked, injured and killed … Palestinian journalism must be protected as a matter of urgency.”
Al Jazeera journalists killed and injured in Gaza
On January 7, Hamza Dahdouh, the eldest son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, was killed by an Israeli missile in Khan Younis. Hamza, who was a journalist like his father, was in a vehicle near al-Mawasi, a supposedly safe area that Israel designated, with another journalist, Mustafa Thuraya, who was also killed in the attack.
According to reports from Al Jazeera correspondents, Hamza and Mustafa’s vehicle was targeted as they were trying to interview civilians displaced by previous bombings.
Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh, centre, hugs his daughter during the funeral of his son Hamza Wael Dahdouh, a journalist with the Al Jazeera television network, who was killed in a reported Israeli air strike in Rafah in the Gaza Strip on January 7, 2024 [AFP]
The Al Jazeera Media Network strongly condemned the attack, adding: “The assassination of Mustafa and Hamza … whilst they were on their way to carry out their duty in the Gaza Strip, reaffirms the need to take immediate necessary legal measures against the occupation forces to ensure that there is no impunity.”
[Al Jazeera]
On December 15, 2023, Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa was hit in an Israeli drone attack that also injured Wael Dahdouh, while they were reporting at Farhana school in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
Abudaqa bled to death for more than four hours as emergency workers were unable to reach him because the Israeli army would not let them.
Abudaqa was the 13th Al Jazeera journalist killed on duty since the launch of the network in 1996.
Al Jazeera established a monument at its headquarters in Doha carrying the names of those who have paid the ultimate price in the line of duty [Al Jazeera]
In 2022, Palestinian reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, renowned across the Arab world, was killed by the Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank while reporting.
Al Jazeera has called on the international community to hold Israel accountable for attacks on reporters.
How many journalists have been killed around the world in 2024?
So far in 2024, 25 journalists and media workers have been killed, according to the CPJ.
At least 20 of those killed were in Palestine. While two were killed in Colombia, and one each in Pakistan, Sudan and Myanmar.
In 2023, more than three-quarters of the 99 journalists and media workers killed worldwide died in the Israel-Gaza war, the majority of them Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.
“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price – their lives – to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said.
(Al Jazeera)
Where is press freedom most restricted?
To measure the pulse of press freedom around the globe, the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) publishes an annual index. It ranks the political, economic, and sociocultural context as well as the legal framework and security of the press in 180 countries and territories.
According to the 2024 World Press Freedom Index, Eritrea has the worst press freedom, followed by Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran.
According to RSF, all independent media have been banned in Eritrea since the transition to a dictatorship in September 2001. The media is directly controlled by the Ministry of Information – a news agency, a few publications and Eri TV.
How many journalists are imprisoned?
As of December 1, 2023, 320 journalists and media workers were imprisoned, according to CPJ.
China (44 behind bars), Myanmar (43), Belarus (28), Russia (22) and Vietnam (19) rank as having the highest number of imprisoned journalists.
China has long been “one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists”, according to the CPJ.
Of the 44 journalists imprisoned in China, nearly half are Uighurs, where they have accused Beijing of crimes against humanity for its mass detentions and harsh repression of the region’s mostly-Muslim ethnic groups.
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