The Committee to Protect Journalists, a US-based press freedom advocacy group, warned world leaders in an open letter published Monday that keeping media workers in jail amid the lethal coronavirus pandemic amounted to a death penalty
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th March, 2020) The Committee to Protect Journalists, a US-based press freedom advocacy group, warned world leaders in an open letter published Monday that keeping media workers in jail amid the lethal coronavirus pandemic amounted to a death penalty.
"For journalists jailed in countries affected by the virus, freedom is now a matter of life and death. Imprisoned journalists have no control over their surroundings, cannot choose to isolate, and are often denied necessary medical care," it wrote.
It has launched a social media campaign to free some 250 journalists, who it says are being held behind bars in China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Eritrea, Vietnam and Iran in relation to their work. A petition calling for their release on Change.org has been signed by hundreds of people.
The World Health Organization has said that prisoners are particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus because self-isolation in often crowded cells is impossible. Some countries began this month to free inmates temporarily to limit the spread of the virus.
