VOA journalists faced multiple incidents of harassment and intimidation while covering the demonstrations in Venezuela.

Alvaro Algarra, was surrounded by more than 20 armed, hooded thugs on motorcycles while covering a demonstration in Caracas. During a siege of Venezuela’s parliament by pro-government and armed groups, Mr. Algarra was detained for nine hours but reported throughout.

National Assembly Siege  reporter Carolina Alcalde, was harassed by police while covering Constituent Assembly elections.

The recent attacks on Achilova, 68, resemble assaults she experienced in November 2016, when two women approached her, yelling “This is the one who takes pictures and pours dirt on Turkmenistan” in the cafeteria at a rehabilitation center northeast of the capital, Ashgabat. This attack came one day after Human Rights Watch issued a statement decrying an October 25 assault on Achilova, saying “Achilova’s ordeal was clearly yet another orchestrated attempt to silence a critic.”

“Journalism is not a crime, in Turkmenistan or elsewhere in the modern world. Soltan’s life has now been explicitly threatened in an effort to stop her from doing her job in Turkmenistan,” said RFE/RL President Thomas Kent. “The Turkmen government must immediately put an end to the persecution of Soltan Achilova and assure her safety.”

Achilova’s reports appear regularly on the website of RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk Radiosy. According to Turkmen Service Director Farruh Yusupov, she is one of the main contributors to the website of photos and videos from within Turkmenistan. Recently, the focus of her reporting has been the government’s preparations for the Asian Games, including a story on the removal of a statue of former Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov from a major thoroughfare in the capital, Ashgabat.

Attacks on RFE/RL contributors in Turkmenistan, one of the world’s most closed societies, have intensified over the past three years. Saparmamed Nepeskuliev, a video journalist who contributed to the Turkmen Service, disappeared more than two years ago, and is now in prison on narcotics charges that rights groups say were “trumped up” in retaliation for his reporting on decrepit infrastructure and economic inequality in the country’s western region. (He was released in 2018). After filing video reports about local life in Turkmenistan’s northern Dashoguz province, correspondent Khudayberdy Allashov was taken into custody and severely beaten in December 2016; he and his mother were subsequently jailed for three months on charges of possessing chewing tobacco, a product that is widely used in Turkmenistan and is not known to have led to any previous arrest. In December 2014, Achilova was questioned by unidentified men in civilian clothing, as she interviewed people waiting to purchase fresh meat that had suddenly become available in shops around the country.

The United States, the OSCE, and media advocacy organizations have expressed concern about Turkmenistan’s persecution of journalists.

Turkmenistan is ranked “not free” in Freedom House’s 2017 press freedom survey of 199 countries and territories, tied with North Korea at the bottom of the scale with 98 points out of 100.

Because of political conditions, RFE/RL has no bureau inside Turkmenistan, working instead through a local network of contributors to provide the country’s only Turkmen-language alternative to state-controlled media. Its Turkmen Service website logged a monthly average of 440,000 visits and 800,000 page views in 2016, and it has 175,000 followers on Facebook.

On November 27, 2017, at the end of a two-and-a-half-hour trial at the People’s Court of Hà Tĩnh, Hoá was sentenced to seven years in prison followed by three years of house arrest on a charge of “disseminating propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under article 88 of country’s penal code.

Hoá, 22, is a known activist in Vietnam, who has worked closely with the Catholic Church. He began contributing to RFA in summer 2016 as a citizen journalist. He shared videos which showed the public outcry and protests in Vietnam over the government’s silence in the wake of a chemical spill at the Formosa Hà Tĩnh Steel plant that killed tons of fish and devastated fishing communities along the country’s central coast. Hoa’s family lives in Quảng Ích—a village in the Kỳ Khang Commune, Hà Tĩnh Province, Kỳ Anh District—which is one of the areas most severely affected by toxic waste discharged from the Formosa plant spill.

Earlier, on November 19, 2016, Hoá was beaten by police in Hà Tĩnh. The officers confiscated his equipment, including his mobile phone. He went into hiding upon his release, fearing more reprisal.

On January 23, authorities informed Hoá’s family that he had been officially detained after the family filed a petition to the provincial authorities. Police documents showed that Hoá was being held in violation of Article 258 of Vietnam’s penal code, for “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state,” an offense that carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.

In April 2017, Colonel Nguyễn Tiến Nam, Deputy Director of the Hà Tĩnh police, publicly announced the charges against Hoá. According to the indictment, Hoá set up accounts on multiple social networks in order to post information to smear, distort, incite, slander the government, slander the Party.

That same month, authorities released a short video of Hoá confessing his guilt and asking for forgiveness. In the video, he asks others to not make “the same mistakes he has done.” Police also pointed to Hoá signing a $1,500 contract with foreign media outlets to produce 16 videos per month. Though authorities did not identify Radio Free Asia, the contract terms are those in his contract with RFA.

He has been held incommunicado since his arrest.

In August 2018, Hoa was beaten by Vietnamese authorities into making a confession against environmental activist Le Dinh Luong, who was on trial for attempting to overthrow the government. Speaking to RFA’s Vietnamese Service after the trial, Luong’s defense lawyer Ha Huy Son slammed the sentence handed down to his client, saying the court had presented “no evidence” to show that Luong had worked to overthrow the government, a charge frequently brought under Article 79 of Vietnam’s Penal Code to arrest and imprison democracy and human rights activists in the country.

“They based their decision on the testimony of two witnesses, Nguyen Van Hoa and Nguyen Viet Dung,” Son said. “But both of them have retracted what they said in earlier testimony.” “They now say that they were beaten and forced to say what they did,” he said.

Following the abuse of Hoa, the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned  the actions of Vietnamese authorities. “Vietnamese authorities must stop immediately their harassment and abuse of reporter Nguyen Van Hoa,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s Southeast Asia representative. “Instead of beating jailed journalists into making false confessions, Vietnamese authorities should free all journalists behind bars, reform the laws that put them there, and hold to account those who abused their power to commit this assault.”

Già, who was born Nguyễn Dinh Ngọc, was arrested in December 2014 at his home in the No. 7 district of Hồ Chí Minh City’s Tân Phong commune according to an announcement on the city’s official police website. He was a regular contributor to Radio Free Asia among other websites, including Dân Làm Báo (The People’s Journal) and Dân Luận (The People’s Opinion).

According to Vietnamese state media, the blogger posted essays critical of the government and the party. The prosecutor’s report claims he submitted 26 articles to various websites from February to December of 2014. Of those, 14 were published. Prosecutors say they found 22 articles defaming and discrediting party leaders and the state.

Tuổi Trẻ Online quoted the jury as saying he was only given four years because his father is a 50-year party member while his grandmother is regarded as a hero mother who helped the communist revolution in Vietnam.

Human rights groups allege Article 88 is often used by authorities to imprison peaceful activists. Già began contributing to RFA in early 2013, explaining that he felt RFA was the most reliable news source in Vietnam and best suited to his work. He provided weekly blog entries, which concluded in December 2014 just two weeks before his arrest. In its ruling to sentence Già, the court mentioned RFA, saying that “many of his articles were sent to RFA.”

On October 5, 2016, the People’s Court reduced his sentence from four to three years served in jail with an additional three years on probation instead of the four-year prison term and three-year probation period he was sentenced to by the same court in March. Hà Huy Sơn, Già’s attorney, told RFA, “they said the reason is for mercy, and that his family had helped the government.” Già’s mother sheltered Northern troops during the Vietnam War against the US-backed South, and his soldier sister was jailed by the Americans during the conflict that ended in 1975, according to Chanelnewsasia.com.

Giá’s attorney confirmed in January 2017 that he was moved from Bố Lá prison in the Bến Cát district of Bình Dương province to the prison camp in Xuân Lộc, Đồng Nai province.

Semena was given a 2½ year suspended sentence and a three-year ban on “public activities,” which appears to be a reference to his journalism. A computer belonging to him that was seized during an investigation in 2016 was confiscated.

RFE/RL President Thomas Kent condemned today’s conviction as part of an orchestrated effort by Russian authorities “to obstruct the journalistic mission of RFE/RL to provide independent news and information to Crimean residents.” He said the verdict “contradicts Semena’s fundamental right to free expression and international norms of justice,” and should be reversed.

Semena has insisted on his innocence throughout his trial, telling the court during concluding arguments on September 18 that the views expressed in his writing are based on international law, as well as domestic Russian and Ukrainian law. He declared, “the state not only has no legal right… it has no moral right to punish” a citizen for expressing positions that the constitution’s freedom of expression guarantees.

The charge against Semena stems from an opinion piece he wrote for RFE/RL’s Crimea Realities (Krym.Realii) website in 2015 criticizing Russia’s seizure of Crimea and expressing support for activists’ plans to block it. The court ruled that the commentary, which was published as part of a discussion in which writers expressed a range of views about the annexation, called for the violation of Russia’s territorial integrity.

The United States, the European Union, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and numerous media watchdogs and human rights groups have condemned the charges against Semena as politically motivated.

In March this year, 10 members of the U.S. Congress, led by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), sent a letter to Crimea’s prosecutor general urging that the charges against Semena be dropped.

Produced by an editorial unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Krym.Realii is virtually the only remaining source of independent news in Crimea, producing audio, visual, and text content in three languages for broadcast and digital distribution via social networks including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Odnoklassniki. The website has averaged 1.5 million visits and 2.5 million page views each month in 2017, even though it has been blocked intermittently since its launch in March 2014.

Aseyev, 27, who has referred to his efforts to chronicle daily life under conditions of war in the Donetsk region as “my education,” publishes unflinching texts and photos about current news and military developments, and posts about shopping, entertainment, and culture both in separatist and non-separatist controlled cities. He has also covered sensitive issues relating to the conflict, including reactions among Donetsk residents to the apparent assassination in October 2016 of the notorious Russia-backed separatist commander known as “Motorola.”

Former Member of Parliament Yehor Firsov, a long-time acquaintance of Aseyev’s, alleged in a June 6 Facebook post that Aseyev had been seized in Donetsk and forcibly held by Russia-backed separatist forces controlling the region, information he repeated in a June 7 Facebook post and a June 10 “Українська правда” (Ukrayinska Pravda) blog post, citing “unofficial sources.”

On July 16, Firsov shared on Facebook that a group of Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine’s war-torn eastern Donetsk region confirmed that they were holding the blogger from eastern Ukraine. Aseyev’s mother was given written confirmation, according to the post, and was allowed to visit him in separatist custody. Firsov also wrote that the separatists have accused Aseyev of espionage and threatened him with up to 14 years in prison. “His only hope is the exchange of prisoners,” he said. The separatists, who control parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, have repeatedly denied having any information about Aseyev.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Human Rights Watch both report that, according to their sources, Aseyev was detained by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). CPJ reported that the head of a volunteer group that works to release political prisoners in Ukraine told an independent broadcaster that the separatists detained Aseyev for his “pro-Ukrainian stance” and for “spreading information about the so-called DNR, which in militants’ opinion, is not true.”

Human Rights Watch has documented numerous cases in which DNR’s security ministry forcibly disappeared civilians, holding them in custody for weeks without any contact with the outside world and subjecting them to ill-treatment. A special DNR cabinet decree enables the ministry to hold people for up to 30 days, and sometimes longer, without charging them or even acknowledging their detention. Such a decree blatantly violates international legal protections against arbitrary detention, applicable both during conflict and peacetime.

Aseyev also reports for other Ukrainian publications, including Зеркало недели(Mirror Weekly) and Тиждень (The Ukrainian Week).

Siad worked with VOA Somali reporter Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulle, who was among those wounded in the attack. Mr. Abdulle suffered a broken hand, burns on much of his body, and shrapnel wounds to his head and neck and is receiving medical care in Turkey.

The two journalists had just returned from the Central Prison where they interviewed the Somali Justice Minister about an education program for prisoners. Preparing to ingest the video at an office they were using at the Somali Red Crescent Society, Abdulkadir realized he left the laptop charger in his car. He went outside to get the charger. That’s when the bomb went off. Ali Nur was killed inside the Somali Red Crescent Society.

Ali Nur Siad was born in Jamame town in Lower Jubba region.
He took camera training at a media institute in Mogadishu. His brothers Bakar Hassan Ali and Abdulkadir Nur Siad said he loved being a cameraman and was always showing his videos to journalists in Mogadishu to get their advice.  In 2004, he started work as a freelance cameraman. Over the last year, he began working more regularly with VOA reporter Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulle.

Ali Nur Siad is survived by his pregnant wife Naimo Nur Gedi, and two children, ages 4 and 1.

The Sabail district court in Baku ruled that the Ministry of Transport, Communications, and High Technology’s request to block access to the websites of five news outlets — RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service, the nongovernmental Azadliq newspaper (unrelated to azadliq.org), Meydan TV, and the online Turan TV and Azerbaycan Saati TV channels — must be carried out.

Access to the websites has been blocked since March 27 on the instructions of the Prosecutor General’s Office, which claims that the websites “pose a threat” to Azerbaijan’s national security, and accuses them of “posting content deemed to promote violence, hatred, or extremism, violate privacy, or constitute slander.”

The March blockage followed the publication of investigations by the Azerbaijani Service, in cooperation with the Sarajevo-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, on financial activities linked to members of the president’s family and inner circle. The Service also recently published reports raising questions about costs associated with a September 2016 referendum that extended the term of presidential office from five to seven years and created the post of Vice President, to which President Ilham Aliyev appointed his wife earlier this year.

According to Azerbaijani legislation, a guilty judgment by the court against azadliq.org could be used as grounds to prosecute the website’s correspondents. In 2014, authorities imprisoned prominent investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova on charges of encouraging an attempted suicide and financial crimes in a case that foreign governments and rights advocates condemned as politically motivated.

Ismayilova’s arrest came just weeks before Azerbaijani state agents raided and sealed RFE/RL’s Baku bureau, forcing it to close in May 2015. In December 2008, RFE/RL was formally banned from FM airwaves by Azerbaijan’s National TV-Radio Council but continues to engage with its audience via satellite and online social media platforms.

Locals described to an RFE/RL reporter how their villages were shaken by the powerful blast and how ISIS militants had driven local families out of the area. A video report of reactions by residents of Nangarhar province’s Achin district, where the bomb was detonated, was viewed 600,000 times on RFE/RL’s English YouTube page, and was also seen more than 247,000 times on the Afghan Service’s Facebook page.