On September 17, 2000, Georgiy Gongadze, well-known Ukrainian journalist and founder of popular Ukrainian online newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda, was murdered. His decapitated body was found on November 2, 2000, about 100 km from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Georgiy’s murder is considered by many to be the most important crime against a journalist in the history of independent Ukraine because the state’s highest leaders were involved in it. Concretely, the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The perpetrator, Oleksiy Pukach, a former general and high-ranking official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, is currently serving a jail sentence for…

To protect press and media freedom, we need an accurate picture of the forces that threaten it. To do this, we must collect and verify as much information as possible. That is why the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) has launched the ‘Report It’ campaign to create awareness and encourage everyone to play a role in documenting and reporting the many violations committed against journalists and media workers across Europe. It is wrong that such violations, abuses and aggressions have become so frequent as to be almost accepted as “situation:normal”. Through this campaign, the MFRR insists that this behaviour should…

Since 9 September 2020, a number of journalists and photographers on the island of Lesbos have been intermittently restricted from reporting from an area where thousands of refugees and asylum seekers are being held without accommodation or sanitation after fires destroyed large areas of the Moria Registration and Identification Centre. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) together with the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) partners wrote to Minister for Civil Protection, Michalis Chrisochoidis and Police Lieutenant General Karamalakis calling for all journalists to safely access the relevant sites on Lesbos, in line with Greece’s obligations under international law. Dear Minister…

On 10 August, the day after the fraudulent elections in Belarus, journalist Natalya Lubnevskaya was injured in the leg by a rubber bullet fired by security forces. She was covering demonstrations in Minsk for the newspaper “Nasha Niva”. She has just been released from hospital and is demanding justice. Natalya, 27 years old, graduated from the Institute of Journalism of the Belarusian State University five years ago. She covers news related to women and the status of women for the daily newspaper Nasha Niva. Today she gave an interview to the online media TUT.BY. “No one forced me to work…

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…