China tagged “world’s leading jailer of journalists”

BAGUIO CITY (January 29, 2025) -- China, Israel, and Myanmar emerged as the world’s three worst offenders in another record-setting year for journalists jailed because of their work, according to press freedom watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists in its 2024 prison census.

Belarus and Russia rounded out the top five, with CPJ documenting its second-highest number of journalists behind bars – a global total of at least 361 journalists incarcerated on December 1, 2024. 

Routinely appearing at the top of CPJ’s annual prison census, the 50 documented behind bars as of December 1, 2024 in China, are likely an undercount given Beijing’s pervasive censorship and mass surveillance, the CPJ also said.  Almost half of those held in China are members of the mostly Muslim Uyghur minority. 

According to the CPJ, media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai has been held in Hong Kong since December 2020 amid repeated postponements of his trial on national security charges, which could see him jailed for life.

“Asia tops regions for jailed journalists”

CPJ also found out Asia region topping other regions around the world where the number of journalists behind bars in 2024 was highest, sensing that “authoritarian repression and political unrest laid the ground for the jailing of journalists across Asia”. 



Of the 361 journalists jailed globally, Asia remained the region with the highest number of journalists behind bars in 2024 (more than 30% or 111 of the global total). 

Aside from the leading jailers – China (50), Myanmar (35), and Vietnam (16) - journalists were also behind bars in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, and also in the Philippines. In fact, Vietnam was trying with Iran and Eritrea as the seventh-worst jailer of the year.

Myanmar (on third place with 35), :”journalists were taken into custody on anti-state allegations after a 2021 military coup ousted a democratically elected government,” the CPJ census noted.

Of Vietnam’s three new prisoners in 2024, two— Nguyen Vu Binh and Nguyen Chi Tuyen —were sentenced to seven- and five-year terms respectively for propagandizing against the state.  The third, Truong Huy San, is in pre-trial detention after writing critical commentary about two of the country’s top leaders – the then-ruling, now-deceased Communist Party’s long-serving chief Nguyen Phu Trong and President To Lam.

Bangladesh held four journalists seen as supporters of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, ousted in August following mass protests that ended her 15-year rule. Dozens of journalists whose reporting was considered favorable toward Hasina’s government were subsequently targeted in criminal investigations.

India had three journalists in custody, two of them Kashmiris arrested in 2023against a backdrop of increased incarceration of journalists in the Muslim-majority region after the 2019 repeal of its special autonomy status.

CPJ also noted about the Taliban’s repressive attitude towards two journalists whom it held and cited the Philippines which “continues to detain Frenchie Mae Cumpio on charges that could see her jailed for life”.

Cumpio was a community radio broadcaster, known for her coverage of alleged abuses and human rights violations allegedly perpetrated by Philippine security forces. On the night of February 7, 2020, she was arrested from her residence in Tacloban City and charged with illegal possession of firearms and explosives and financing terrorism, which she has denied.