Mykola Semena
Police arrested opinion writer and reporter Semana 7 months after he wrote an article in 2015 denouncing Russia's annexation of Crimea. On conditional release post-arrest, he received a 2… More
Muhammad Bekjanov
A prominent journalist and advocate for democracy in the post-Soviet era, Bekjanov was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment in 1999 when then-president Karimov blamed explosions in Tashkent on Erk,… More
Dzamshid Karimov
Freelance journalist Karimov has twice been placed in psychiatric detention by Uzbek authorities--for 5 years in 2006 and again for 5 years in 2012. A nephew of former president… More
Nedim Türfent
Kurdish reporter and poet Türfent was arrested in May 2016 and sentenced to 8 years in prison on terrorism charges. During pretrial interrogations, he was tortured and forced to… More
Ayşe Düzkan
On June 11, 2019, Düzkan was released after serving 18 months in Bakırköy prison in Istanbul. She was originally imprisoned in January 2018 on terrorism charges for her work… More
Edip Polat
A Kurdish writer, Polat has been jailed three times for writing in support of Kurdish self-determination, which authorities deemed to be “separatist propaganda,” even though many of his works… More
Eşber Yağmurdereli
Blind human rights activist Yağmurdereli has spent nearly 20 years in prison on various charges related to comments about Türkiye's human rights abuses. Most recently, he was arrested in… More
Bülent Şık
A writer, food engineer, and environmental activist, Şık was indicted in 2018 after he wrote articles discussing the results of a government study of pollution. In 2019, he was… More
Emre Soncan
Foreign military affairs correspondent and author Soncan was arrested in a purge of suspected followers of exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, who was blamed for the July 2016 attempted coup.… More
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