In record year, China, Israel, and Myanmar are world’s leading jailers of journalists - Committee to Protect Journalists 1/24/25, 10:29 AM – Repeal existing laws that create a risk, or reform them to ensure they contain appropriate guardrails that prevent them from being wielded to prevent or punish reporting. Rights-respecting governments should: – Monitor new proposed legislation to ensure there are no provisions that could be used to prevent or punish journalism. – Refrain from ratifying the U.N. Convention against Cybercrime. Any countries proceeding with adoption must implement it with rigorous safeguards to minimize the convention’s most harmful elements. 3. End the misuse of anti-state and !nancial crime laws to punish journalists Legal experts have found that the abuse of laws and manipulation of legal systems to persecute or retaliate against individuals is a form of judicial harassment. Judicial authorities must be enabled to recognize these e!orts for what they are and exercise the appropriate judgement to mitigate harm. – Judicial authorities, supreme courts, national law commissions and/or other appropriate bodies should develop guidelines for handling cases involving routinely abused legislation and curbing the misuse of laws to wrongfully deprive journalists of their liberty. Similarly, courts should ensure that journalists who have formally served their sentences are not kept in prison beyond that period. – National legislative or other appropriate bodies should review press freedom indicators like CPJ’s records of imprisoned journalists and work with local, regional and/or international civil society groups to reform legislation routinely abused to retaliate against journalists for their reporting. 4. End targeting of journalists’ lawyers In recent years, CPJ has identi#ed lawyers of journalists facing retaliation in Iran, China, Belarus, Turkey, and Egypt, the countries that are among the world’s worst jailers of journalists. "is trend continued in 2024, as evident in the case of Jimmy Lai, https://cpj.org/thematic-reports/in-record-year-china-israel-and-myanmar-are-worlds-leading-jailers-of-journalists/ Page 23 of 27