Con­clu­sion from yes­ter­day

Syr­i­an forces loy­al to Pres­i­dent Bashar al-As­sad were hold­ing at least 15 jour­nal­ists, mak­ing the coun­try the fifth-worst jail­er. None of the de­tainees have been charged with a crime, and the au­thor­i­ties have been un­will­ing to ac­count for the de­tainees' where­abouts or well-be­ing. Among those be­lieved to be in cus­tody is Austin Tice, a US free­lance re­porter who had con­tributed cov­er­age of the coun­try's civ­il war to The Wash­ing­ton Post, Mc­Clatchy, Al-Jazeera Eng­lish, and sev­er­al oth­er news out­lets.

With 14 jour­nal­ists be­hind bars, Viet­nam was the sixth-worst jail­er of the press. In each of the past sev­er­al years, Viet­namese au­thor­i­ties have ramped up their crack­down on crit­i­cal jour­nal­ists, fo­cus­ing heav­i­ly on those who work on­line. All but one of the re­porters im­pris­oned in 2012 pub­lished blogs or con­tributed to on­line news pub­li­ca­tions. And all but one were held on an­ti-state charges re­lat­ed to ar­ti­cles on po­lit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive top­ics such as the coun­try's re­la­tions with Chi­na and its treat­ment of the Catholic com­mu­ni­ty.

World­wide, 118 jour­nal­ists whose work ap­peared pri­mar­i­ly on­line were in jail on De­cem­ber 1, con­sti­tut­ing a lit­tle more than half of the cen­sus. The pro­por­tion is con­sis­tent with those seen in CPJ's pre­vi­ous three sur­veys, which had fol­lowed sev­er­al years of sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in the num­bers of im­pris­oned on­line jour­nal­ists. Print jour­nal­ists con­sti­tut­ed the sec­ond-largest pro­fes­sion­al group, with 77 jailed world­wide. The oth­er de­tainees were from ra­dio, tele­vi­sion and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing.

Azer­bai­jan, the world's sev­enth-worst jail­er, vi­cious­ly cracked down on do­mes­tic dis­sent as it host­ed two ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al events, the Eu­ro­vi­sion 2012 song con­test and the In­ter­net Gov­er­nance Fo­rum. The au­thor­i­ties im­pris­oned at least nine jour­nal­ists on charges in­clud­ing hooli­gan­ism, drug pos­ses­sion, and ex­tor­tion. CPJ con­clud­ed that the charges were fab­ri­cat­ed in reprisal for the jour­nal­ists' work.

With six jour­nal­ists in prison, Ethiopia was the eighth-worst jail­er in the world. The au­thor­i­ties broad­ened the scope of the coun­try's an­ti-ter­ror law in 2009, crim­i­nal­is­ing cov­er­age of any group the Gov­ern­ment deems to be ter­ror­ist, a list that in­cludes op­po­si­tion po­lit­i­cal par­ties. Uzbek­istan and Sau­di Ara­bia, each of which was hold­ing four jour­nal­ists, fill out the list of the ten worst jail­ers.

The de­tainees in Uzbek­istan in­clude Muham­mad Bek­janov and Yusuf Ruz­imu­radov, the two longest-im­pris­oned jour­nal­ists on CPJ's sur­vey. They were jailed in 1999 for pub­lish­ing a banned news­pa­per. In Sau­di Ara­bia, news­pa­per colum­nist Hamza Kash­gari faces a po­ten­tial death penal­ty on re­li­gious in­sult charges stem­ming from Twit­ter post­ings that de­scribed a fan­ci­ful con­ver­sa­tion with the Prophet Muham­mad.

CPJ con­firmed the death of one im­pris­oned jour­nal­ist, Iran­ian blog­ger Sat­tar Be­heshti. Ar­rest­ed in Oc­to­ber on charges of "act­ing against na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty," Be­heshti was dead with­in days. Fel­low pris­on­ers said Be­heshti, 35, was beat­en dur­ing in­ter­ro­ga­tion, re­peat­ed­ly threat­ened with death,

and hung from his limbs from the ceil­ing, ac­cord­ing to news re­ports.

CPJ be­lieves that jour­nal­ists should not be im­pris­oned for do­ing their jobs. The or­gan­i­sa­tion has sent let­ters ex­press­ing its se­ri­ous con­cerns to each coun­try that has im­pris­oned a jour­nal­ist. In the past year, CPJ ad­vo­ca­cy led to the ear­ly re­lease of at least 58 im­pris­oned jour­nal­ists.

CPJ's list is a snap­shot of those in­car­cer­at­ed at 12:01 am on De­cem­ber 1, 2012. It does not in­clude the many jour­nal­ists im­pris­oned and re­leased through­out the year; ac­counts of those cas­es can be found at www.cpj.org. Jour­nal­ists re­main on CPJ's list un­til the or­gan­i­sa­tion de­ter­mines with rea­son­able cer­tain­ty that they have been re­leased or have died in cus­tody.

Jour­nal­ists who ei­ther dis­ap­pear or are ab­duct­ed by non-state en­ti­ties such as crim­i­nal gangs or mil­i­tant groups are not in­clud­ed on the prison cen­sus. Their cas­es are clas­si­fied as "miss­ing" or "ab­duct­ed."

Com­mit­tee to

Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists