“Today is the most dangerous time to be a journalist in CPJ’s history… The rise in journalist killings is part of a broader trend of muzzling the media globally.” – Jodie Ginsberg, CEO, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
“At no point in the last 20 years have so many people been denied the benefits of open societies, like the ability to voice opinions, access a free media, or participate in free and open elections.” – Quinn McKew, Executive Director, Article 19
“Reliable information is vital in conflict situations… It is unacceptable that journalists pay with their lives for this work.” – Audrey Azoulay, Director-General, UNESCO
From Gaza’s rubble to the Sahel’s hidden prisons, independent journalism faces an unprecedented assault, with record fatalities and sophisticated digital repression silencing the truth.
“Life in exile is hard. I miss my home, my father, my siblings, my friends,” said Sadibou*, a Malian journalist, his voice heavy with pain.
Using a pseudonym to protect his life, Sadibou tells Journalists For Justice (JFJ) a story that is becoming tragically common in a world increasingly hostile to the truth. His ordeal began when he and two other journalists from Niger and Burkina Faso started working on a collaborative cross-border investigation on the failures and corruption of the Malian military junta.
It detailed how top government officials were enriching themselves with illegal construction projects while the country’s economy crumbled, leaving citizens to grapple with constant power outages and rampant insecurity. Little did they know that they would have to flee their home countries to save their lives.
Ten days before the story was published in ZAM Magazine in July 2024, the state’s response was swift and chilling.
“I began receiving threats – calls, texts, even anonymous tweets,” Sadibou recalled. The threats escalated from anonymous messages to a direct, terrifying phone call. The voice on the other end said, ‘We know what you’re working on. We know exactly where you live in Kalaban-coro, in Bamako. We’ll find you’.”
A source in Mali’s intelligence services gave him a stark warning: he was being watched.
“The military doesn’t talk – they arrest or kill anyone working against the government,” the source told him, urging him to leave the country immediately.
In June 2024, Sadibou fled to neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire by public transport, leaving behind all his earthly possessions: his house, his car, and a small farm. His wife and four children followed in early July after it became clear it was too dangerous for them to remain in Mali. But the arm of the junta is long.
“Even there, I received four or five anonymous calls – I didn’t answer, but I knew they were threats,” he said.
His fears were confirmed when, about 10 days after his family fled, two men in civilian clothes arrived at his home in Mali in a white Land Cruiser with no number plates.
“This is their tactic – they pretend to be ordinary people, then arrest or abduct you. If I had been there, I believe they would have taken me,” Sadibou explained.
On the advice of a friend and fellow journalist, he moved his family again to a nearby country in September 2024.
Although he received some financial support for his relocation from some media organisations, life in exile is a constant struggle.
“The threats stopped when I got here. That’s a big relief. But the challenge now is sustaining my work. Getting critical data isn’t easy. Sources aren’t always available, and I often have to wait or pay them to gather information. But I’m free here – I can work without fear,” he said.
He does not see a path to returning home to Mali anytime soon. “Unless there’s a general election and a government that respects rights, returning isn’t possible.”
Sadibou said that the state of human rights in Mali has deteriorated since the coup of 2021. Human rights organisations and activists have been forced to either stop their call for justice or face jail, risking never being heard of again.
“I know several journalists and activists who’ve left Mali. For example, Malick Konaté and Étienne Fakaba Sissoko. Étienne was jailed twice after publishing a book criticising the Malian government. After his last release, following a successful campaign by Amnesty International, he left the country. Now he and Konaté continue their work from abroad. That’s the only way to survive as a critical voice in Mali,” added Sadibou.
Sadibou’s story of state-sanctioned persecution is echoed thousands of miles away in Venezuela, where journalist Luis Carlos Diaz suffered a similarly brutal crackdown designed to silence critical voices.
His ordeal began with death threats from government officials in 2011 and culminated in a terrifying, kidnapping-style detention in 2019. Over a dozen security officers in unmarked vehicles abducted him off the street, hooded him, and took him to a clandestine torture centre. He was later moved to El Helicoide, a prison known as the largest torture centre in Latin America. While he was detained, officers raided his home, threatened his wife, who was a cancer patient at the time, and stole their money and equipment.
Following significant national and international pressure, Diaz was released but not freed. He was subjected to a three-year judicial process that barred him from working in the media, speaking to the press, or leaving the country. This, as he explained to JFJ in an interview, is a deliberate state strategy.
“What Chavismo in Venezuela does every time it disappears or tortures a journalist is silence everyone else,” he said. Chavismo began as a populist, socialist movement under Hugo Chávez, aiming to empower Venezuela’s poor through oil-funded social programmes and anti-imperialist rhetoric. Under Nicolás Maduro, it has morphed into an increasingly authoritarian regime marked by electoral manipulation, repression of dissent, and consolidation of power.
Diaz explained that around 20 journalists are currently in prison and several others remain in a state of enforced disappearance.
“Thousands have had to go into exile and others simply have to take up other jobs because the risk of doing journalism is so high,” he said. “I didn’t abandon journalism because I was able to continue working with NGOs on their communications, but obviously, I couldn’t do journalism normally or freely in Venezuela. My generation has never known normalcy.”
The Venezuelan government has systematically dismantled the free press by controlling access to newsprint, shutting down critical television and radio stations, and blocking independent news websites and international media outlets.
While some regimes use detention and torture to silence the press, in active conflict zones, journalists face the immediate threat of lethal force. This was the stark reality for Christina Assi, a Lebanese photojournalist.
In October 2023, while she and her colleagues were observing the conflict between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants from a hillside, they were targeted by two Israeli airstrikes. “It was starting to get dark… and then suddenly, out of nowhere, we were targeted,” she told UN News on May 16, 2025.
As her colleague rushed to put a tourniquet on her bleeding leg, a second strike hit just 40 to 47 seconds later. Alone and gravely injured beside a burning car, she was forced to crawl to safety. The attack, which killed one of her colleagues and cost her a leg, shattered her faith in the conventions designed to protect her.
“As journalists, we are left alone,” she insisted. “I believe in nothing right now. Our press vests are turning us into targets, and it’s becoming a death sentence for us.”
Assi’s harrowing experience is a painful snapshot of a global crisis. The year 2024 marked a grim milestone for press freedom, becoming the deadliest on record for journalists globally. Across war zones and repressive states, the pursuit of truth has been met with escalating violence, arbitrary detention, and insidious digital attacks, creating vast “zones of silence” where critical information is stifled and human rights abuses can flourish unchecked.
At least 124 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide in 2024, the highest number since the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began tracking fatalities in 1992. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reported a similar figure of 122 deaths. UNESCO, focusing on those killed in the line of duty, confirmed 68 fatalities, with over 60 per cent occurring in conflict zones – the highest percentage in over a decade.
“The war in Gaza is unprecedented in its impact on journalists and demonstrates a major deterioration in global norms on protecting journalists in conflict zones, but it is far from the only place journalists are in danger,” stated CPJ Chief Executive Officer Jodie Ginsberg.
According to her organisation, the Israel-Gaza war was overwhelmingly the deadliest conflict for journalists, with Israel responsible for more than two-thirds of the fatalities. Of the 124 journalists killed globally, 82 were Palestinians covering the war in Gaza, and three were killed in Lebanon. CPJ investigations determined that at least 10 journalists were “deliberately targeted” in Gaza and Lebanon, with ongoing inquiries into whether at least 20 other cases were also intentional. Al Jazeera has gone further, characterising some of these killings as “targeted assassinations”.
Sami Shahada, a Palestinian reporter, also lost his leg due to a severe injury in Nuseirat in April 2024. Despite his disability, he continues to document events.
“I was a field journalist, carrying a camera in an open area and wearing a helmet and a jacket which identified me as a journalist, yet I was directly targeted,” Shahada told UN News.
Moamen Sharafi, another Palestinian journalist, lost several family members in an Israeli bombing but maintains that professionally, “nothing has changed” for him.
The truth is suppressed
In Sudan, the civil war that began in April 2023 has dramatically worsened the press freedom situation. At least seven journalists were killed in 2024. Hanan Adam, a correspondent for the Sudanese Communist Party-affiliated newspaper Al-Midan and an employee of the Ministry of Culture and Information in al-Gezira state, was killed alongside her brother Youssef on December 8, 2024, when Rapid Support Forces (RSF) soldiers raided their home in Wad Al-Asha, a village in east-central Sudan. Khaled Balal, the media director at the Supreme Council for Media and Culture in North Darfur and a member of the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate, was shot dead inside his home in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, on March 1, 2024.
Muawiya Abdel Razek, an investigative journalist who contributed to several Sudanese newspapers, including Al-Jarifa and Akhir Lahza, was killed along with three family members in June 2024, during an RSF raid on his home in Al-Droshab, a northern suburb of Khartoum Bahri.
Hawa Rahma, who has reported on human rights and community issues, described her inability to cover the war not as a lack of will, but a consequence of extreme danger and personal vulnerability. Living in east Khartoum, she has witnessed atrocities — including RSF attacks on civilians and bodies left unburied in the streets — but says the risks of reporting are now too high. “Voice a contrary opinion, or make a wrong move in front of these soldiers, and you can wind up with a bullet in your head,” she wrote in a first-person piece for The New Humanitarian.
She spoke of the existential questions that fill her thoughts: “Will I survive? Will I emerge unscathed? If I am killed, will I be buried, or will my body be left on the streets for the dogs to eat?”.
Rahma, like many others, has lost her livelihood, forced to “peddle goods for sale to provide for my family. A well-written story or deeply researched exposé is not what gets you paid anymore”.
Ezaldeen Arbab, head of the Sudanese Journalists Association in Uganda stated that journalists feel like they are in an “undeclared war” against the press. Hassan Ahmed Berkia, a co-founder of the Sudanese Journalists’ Network, fled Sudan and now suffers deeply from the psychological toll, with his family scattered across different countries.
Oussama Bouagila, the North Africa regional advocacy officer for RSF, noted the “complete lack of protective structures for journalists due to the collapse of the state and its institutions” in Sudan.
Forced conscription and silenced voices
Journalists in the Sahel region have seen military juntas systematically dismantle media independence. The International Press Institute (IPI) highlighted “entrenched growing censorship, with a pervading atmosphere of self-censorship among journalists out of fear for their safety and lives, state-sponsored censorship aimed at local and foreign critical media, and enforced conscription of independent journalists.”
In Mali, the junta banned media from reporting on political activities in April 2024. Alfousseini Togo, the editor of the weekly Le Canard de la Venise, was arrested in April 2025 for criticising the Ministry of Justice. He is facing charges of undermining the judiciary, disturbing public order, and defamation, with a potential prison sentence of up to two years.
“Alfousseini Togo’s arrest and detention for criticising the judiciary sends a chilling signal to the entire Malian press, which is already suffering under the threat of government censorship,” said Moussa Ngom, CPJ’s Francophone Africa Representative.
Niger has seen a systematic crackdown since the July 2023 coup. In January 2024, the media umbrella organisation, Maison de la Presse, was suspended. Journalists Ousmane Toudou and Soumana Maiga were arbitrarily arrested in April 2024 for reporting on government actions. In May 2025, three Sahara FM journalists were arrested for airing news of a breach of intelligence contracts between Niger and Russia. A June 2024 amendment to the cybercrime law further criminalises online criticism, imposing harsh prison sentences. Prominent human rights activist Moussa Tiangari was detained in December 2024 and charged with “criminal conspiracy” and “plotting against the authority of the state”. He is facing a potential death penalty.
Burkina Faso has witnessed an alarming trend of forced conscription of journalists. On March 24–25, 2025, Guézouma Sanogo (President of Association des Journalistes du Burkina – AJB), Boukari Ouoba (AJB Vice-President), and Luc Pagbelguem, a journalist at BF1, a privately owned television station, were arrested by plainclothes agents linked to Burkina Faso’s intelligence services for reporting on the military junta’s media crackdown. Within days, unverified military-issued footage showed them wearing camouflage uniforms at a base, prompting fears they were forcibly conscripted without due process.
The junta dissolved the AJB on March 25, 2025, effectively outlawing the country’s main journalists’ union and stripping its members of collective protection and legal status.
Earlier, in June 2024, Serge Atiana Oulon, Adama Bayala, and Kalifara Séré disappeared and were later confirmed to have been forcibly conscripted. Satirical columnist Alain Traoré also disappeared in July 2024.
An exiled Burkinabè journalist lamented, “Free media is dead in this country – all you can hear is government propaganda”.
“I left Ouagadougou, and I’m not planning to return,” the reporter told Human Rights Watch.
Imprisonment and exile
Ethiopia has seen a sharp resurgence of media repression. Authorities detained at least 92 media workers between 2019 and 2024, with a rising number of journalists jailed for covering conflicts, often under “state of emergency laws” or “links to rebel forces”. Ethiopia was the second leading jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa in 2024.
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Tarif Andualem was arrested and detained for reporting on the government’s disbandment of the Fano militia — a decentralised Amhara nationalist group that had previously fought alongside federal forces during the Tigray war but later turned against the authorities. Speaking from detention in Addis Ababa, Tarif said he feared for his family’s safety and had no faith in the judicial system.
“Courts have become political and are being arm-twisted by the state,” he told the International Journalists Network (IJNet), adding that he would have to flee the country for his safety even if freed. “I cannot stay in Ethiopia for as long as Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy is still in power.”
Mulatu Alemayehu Moges, a former journalist and associate professor of journalism at OsloMet University, fled Ethiopia in 2023 after federal authorities ransacked his home, confiscated his equipment, and subjected him to interrogation. In an interview with IJNet, he explained: “I wasn’t at peace because I was under surveillance. Therefore, staying wasn’t an option. I knew my family wasn’t going to be safe”. He now lives in Norway, where he continues to research press freedom and conflict reporting.
Assaults and legal threats
In Uganda, the media landscape is described as “slippery”, with 110 cases of human rights violations against journalists documented in 2024. Journalists face intimidation, arrest, harassment, destruction of equipment, and assault.
In May 2024, three women journalists – Margaret Kayondo, Zainab Namusaazi, and Gertrude Mutyaba – were physically assaulted by the bodyguards of an opposition leader while covering a funeral, suffering injuries and damage to their equipment. Kayondo recounted, “As I was taking photos, I felt someone punching me in the back”.
Namusaazi’s camera was broken by a bodyguard. “We were just doing our job, covering a public event, and suddenly we were under attack,” she stated.
In Kenya, during this year’s demonstrations to commemorate the countrywide Gen Z protests starting in June 2024, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) issued a directive banning live coverage of demonstrations, although the High Court later revoked the order.
Freedom and human rights under siege in Africa amid rising repression
The ban invoked criticism from Amnesty International. “To switch off the media simply because they are reporting what people are saying in the streets is almost attempting to cover up the real sense of outrage that there is in the country,” said Amnesty International Kenya Director Irungu Houghton.
Journalists like Catherine Wanjeri were physically attacked during the June 2024 protests in Nakuru, hit with rubber bullets despite being identifiable as the press. The death of teacher and blogger Albert Ojwang in police custody in June 2025 after posting online remarks critical of a senior government official further intensified concerns about the suppression of dissent.
The digital battleground and legal weaponisation
The digital realm has become a new battleground. Commercial spyware like NSO Group’s Pegasus and QuaDream’s Reign is deployed to gain access to targeted individuals’ mobile phones and computers, compromising source confidentiality and personal safety.
In May 2024, CPJ, Access Now, and Citizen Lab alleged that Pegasus spyware was used to surveil at least five exiled journalists from Russia, Latvia, and Belarus. This year, the Iranian espionage group Damselfly targeted Israeli journalists with spear phishing campaigns aimed at stealing credentials and multi-factor authentication codes.
The year 2024 was the “worst year for internet shutdowns,” with governments imposing at least 296 outages in 54 countries. These blackouts, particularly in India, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Russia, are deliberate acts of political suppression used to disrupt protests, prevent documentation of abuses, and control narratives. The blocking of communication platforms also surged, with X (formerly Twitter) being the most blocked globally, as highlighted by Access Now in its 2024 Internet Shutdowns Annual Report.
Beyond physical and digital attacks, the weaponisation of legal frameworks is a pervasive threat. More than 65% of imprisoned journalists face broad “anti-state charges,” such as “false news” and “terrorism”. Strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) are increasingly deployed to harass journalists through burdensome legal battles.
Experts Weigh In
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) highlighted a “chilling pattern of political disregard” for journalists’ safety in its 2024 World Press Freedom Index.
“Security forces must recognise that journalists are not adversaries but are essential in fulfilling their duty to inform the public,” said Omar Faruk Osman, Secretary-General of the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ).
The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) condemned the killing of over 140 journalists in the Gaza conflict and expressed grave concern about the weaponisation of law, including “Foreign Agents” laws and SLAPPs, to silence the media.
The fight for press freedom is a fight for the public’s right to know. As the threats escalate, the collective efforts of journalists, media organisations, and human rights advocates are more crucial than ever to ensure that truth does not become another casualty of conflict and repression.
* The name of the journalist has been withheld for security reasons.
