Women journalists: less than 15% of detentions, more than 50% of long sentences handed in the last year
On International Women's Day, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) sounds the alarm about the length of the sentences received by women journalists, pointing out that, although only 12.7% of the journalists currently detained worldwide are women (69 women, 474 men), women have received five of the nine longest sentences passed on journalists since the start of 2023.
These five women journalists, iconic figures in Belarus, Myanmar and Burundi, were given jail sentences ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment.
Despite being in the minority among the journalists currently in prison, women journalists have received 55% of the longest sentences passed on media professionals since January 2023. Never have so many women journalists been so harshly punished in the past five years.
Three of the five longest sentences on women journalists were received by Maryna Zolatava, Liudmila Chekina and Valeriya Kastsiuhova in Belarus, while Myanmar imposed the longest of all, the life sentence received by Shin Daewe. Already among the biggest jailers of journalists, these two countries also punish women severely for daring to defend the freedom to report the news. In January 2023, radio presenter Floriane Irangabiye became the first women journalist to be convicted in Burundi for at least five years, receiving a ten-year sentence.
“The unprecedented persecution of women journalists is due to the fact that major figures embodying journalism are increasingly female. On this international day for women's rights , I would like to highlight the entire RSF team’s unwavering commitment to supporting women journalists. This has included providing assistance grants to 140 women journalists in 2023. We also support various projects such as the construction of a specific space in Gaza for women journalists to be able to keep working, the provision of training in electoral coverage to women journalists in Senegal, and a programme of workshops for more than 100 women journalists with our local partner in India, the Network of Women in Media.
Biggest persecutors of women journalists
Belarus alone was responsible for three of the five harshest punishments imposed on women journalists, the sentences ranging from 10 to 12 years in prison passed in 2023 on Maryna Zolatava (Tut.by), Liudmila Chekina (Tut.by) and Valeriya Kastsiuhova (Belarussian Yearbook). “Increasingly active and visible in the public sphere, women journalists working for independent media critical of the authorities were subjected to particularly harsh treatment after the post-election protests in August 2020,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.
In Burundi, Floriane Irangabiye, the radio show host sentenced to ten years in prison in January 2023 although no woman journalist had been convicted for at least five years, is the only journalist currently detained in this central African country. Convicted of “undermining the internal security of the national territory,” she was based in neighbouring Rwanda working for Radio Igicaniro, a radio station critical of the Burundian government, against a backdrop of tension between the two countries. Burundi’s supreme court upheld her sentence on appeal last month.
Myanmar’s military junta went one step further in its persecution of journalists in January 2024 when documentary filmmaker Shin Daewe was given a life sentence, the harshest punishment imposed on any media professional since the military coup in February 2021. A total of 62 other media professionals, including seven women, are currently held in Myanmar’s prisons, highlighting the extent of the junta's extreme intolerance to press freedom.
Finally, in Iran, the crackdown on journalists since the creation of the “Women, Life, Freedom” protest movement continues to grow. After covering Kurdish student Mahsa Amini’s death in September 2022, journalists Elahe Mohammadi and Niloofar Hamedi were each given three sentences totalling 12 and 13 years in prison respectively in October 2023. But under the principle of non-cumulative sentences, they were required to serve only the longest of the three sentences, namely six and seven years in prison respectively. Mohammadi and Hamedi were released provisionally in January, after being held for 15 months, but they risk being returned to prison after their appeals are heard. Four women journalists are currently imprisoned in Iran, including Narges Mohammadi, the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has been held since November 2021.
