387 journalists worldwide are currently detained in connection their work, while 54 are held hostage and 4 are missing, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF)’s 2020 round-up report on abusive treatment of journalists.

Amid widespread outrage at the guilty verdict handed to Maria Ressa, co-founder of the independent news website Rappler, and its writer, Reynaldo Santos Jr, many international civil society organizations have called for the case to be dismissed.

Thailand has been ranked 136th in Reporters Without Borders (RSF)’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index, four places above its 2018 ranking, but is still classified as being in a “difficult situation.”

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Thai authorities to abandon any plan to prosecute Pravit Rojanaphruk, a well-known journalist and free speech advocate who is to be questioned by police tomorrow about a complaint accusing him of sedition in five Facebook posts.   A leading critic of Thailand’s military junta and its lèse-majesté law, Pravit could face a possible 20-year jail sentence if prosecuted on a sedition charge under article 116 of the criminal code as a result of the complaint brought against him by a police lieutenant-colonel.  

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns a Thai government ban, imposed yesterday, on any online contact or interaction with three prominent critics of the regime – a foreign journalist and two academics – and urges all Facebook users beyond the government’s reach to share content from the Facebook accounts of these three critics. The ban’s three targets are Andrew MacGregor Marshall, a well-known Scottish journalist who used to be based in Bangkok, and Thai academics Somsak Jeamteerasakul and Pavin Chachavalpongpun.