Our weekly roundup of press freedom news, highlighting the latest attacks on journalists, their right to publish, and our right to know. Here’s the news for the week of April 12.
A Palestinian artist and photojournalist killed by Israel
Fatima Hassouna, a Palestinian artist and photojournalist who is the protagonist of a documentary due to premiere in Cannes, was killed along with ten members of her family by a direct Israeli military strike on her family home in Gaza City.
According to the International Federation of Journalists and the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate, she is at least the 157th journalist and media worker to be killed since Israel began its war on Gaza.
Four journalists sentenced to jail on charges of “extremism” in Russia
In a closed-door trial, a Russian court sentenced four journalists, Antonina Kravtsova (Favorskaya), Konstantin Gabov, Sergei Karelin and Artem Kriger, to five and a half years in a penal colony.
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemns the Kremlin’s continued crackdown on independent journalists and urges the Russian authorities to immediately release these four journalists.
Another Columbia student taken into custody
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian-born green card holder and student at Columbia University, involved in pro-Palestinian activism, has been arrested during his naturalization interview as part of the process to gain U.S. citizenship.
Drop Site News reports that he is the third green-card holder at Columbia that the Trump administration is looking to deport under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that alleges their activism has “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”—after Mahmoud Khalil and Yunseo Chung.