December 12, Pozirk. Belarus ranked fourth in the top 10 countries by the number of imprisoned journalists this year, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in its annual report.
China leads the list of the world’s largest prisons for journalists with 124 reporters held behind bars, Myanmar follows with 61, while Israel and Belarus have 41 and 40, respectively.
A total of 550 media workers are held behind bars across the world, 7 percent more than last year. Their combined sentence amounts to 250 years in prison, the report said.
The RSF noted “an alarming intensification of attacks on journalists” in 2024, calling for an immediate response to protect them from violence “often perpetrated by governments and armed groups with total impunity.”
“Journalists do not die, they are killed; they are not in prison, regimes lock them up. . . We need to get things moving, to remind ourselves as citizens that journalists are dying for us, to keep us informed,” stressed Thibaut Bruttin, RSF’s director general.
Belarus ranked 167th of 180 assessed countries and territories in the RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index, presented earlier this year.
The ranking placed Belarus between Saudi Arabia and Cuba, reflecting worsening conditions for journalists in the country, which fell 10 places from the last year.
Following the 2020 political crisis and the crackdown on the opposition, Belarusian authorities changed laws to give a legal veneer to attacks on press freedom. The justice system, under complete government control, has begun equating independent journalism with extremism. Most independent media outlets have been officially declared extremist and were forced to leave the country or avoid covering politics.
