The EFJ affiliate in Belarus, the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), celebrates today its 25th anniversary in a particularly hostile context. The EFJ is proud of Belarusian colleagues in their struggle for media freedom and against repression and censorship. We call on all journalists’ organisations and all journalists to show solidarity with colleagues in Belarus. Use the hashtag #BAJ25RAZAM on social networks. Today BAJ celebrates the 25th anniversary of its foundation in a dramatic context. BAJ President Andrey Bastunets calls on journalists’ unions and associations in Europe to continue to inform colleagues and the public about the repeated violations of human…

A new UNESCO report highlights a sharp increase in the global number of protests during which the police and security forces violated media freedom in the first half of 2020, including in Europe. The annual report of the Council of Europe Platform for the Protection of Journalism drew the same conclusions in April, reporting numerous cases of violence in France, United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey, Albania, Azerbaijan and Russia. UNESCO’s new report, Safety of Journalists Covering Protests – Preserving Freedom of the Press During Times of Civil Unrest, points to a wider upward trend in the use of unlawful force by police…

The wave of repression against journalists continues in Belarus. On the sidelines of the demonstrations on Friday, Saturday and Sunday against the disputed president Lukashenko, eleven journalists were abusively detained by the security forces. Nine of them are still in prison today. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) demands their immediate release. The EFJ affiliate in Belarus, the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), which continues to monitor any violation of press freedom in the country, issued today the list of detained journalists: Catarina Andreeva (Belsat), detained in Minsk on Saturday; Max Kalitovky, detained in Minsk on Saturday; Aliaxandr Vasyukovich, detained…

The European and International Federations of Journalists (EFJ-IFJ), respectively Europe’s and the world’s largest organisations of journalists, responded on 9 September to a consultation by the European Commission (EC) on the implementation of Article 17 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.  Article 17 of the EU Directive aims to close the “value-gap” between rights holders and online platforms and to ensure a fair share of the wealth generated by online platforms using protected works, is distributed to creative industries and their authors, including journalists. In a second submission on the article, the federations supported the…

On 8 September, a member of the Armenian National Assembly brought forward a legislative proposal on insult and defamation that aims to increase fines for publishing insults and defamatory comments in the media and social networks. The International and European Federations of Journalists (IFJ and EFJ) join their affiliate, the Union of Journalists of Armenia (UJA), in urging the parliament not to take up the proposal. The deputy speaker of the National Assembly, Alen Simonyan, proposed the bill to amend the civil code. The proposal aims to increase compensation for insult or defamation by five times, bringing damages for an…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) on Tuesday called on the member states of the Council of Europe to put an end to the repression of journalists in Belarus. 159 journalists have been detained since the fraudulent elections of 9 August. The EFJ General Secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez, who was invited to speak on press freedom by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on Tuesday in Strasbourg, called on the 47 member states of the Council of Europe to take concrete actions to end the repression of journalists in Belarus. He recalled that according to the monitoring of…