● India: RSF Urges Political Parties to Adopt 10-Point Press Freedom Program Ahead of Elections. In light of India’s general elections starting on April 19 and the country’s press freedom undergoing a drastic decline, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) addresses India’s political parties and calls on them to commit to safeguarding people’s rights to reliable news and information and the journalists’ work and safety. RSF urges the parties to adopt ten key press freedom recommendations: 1) free arbitrarily detained journalists; 2) overhaul the terrorism laws used against journalists; 3) cease censoring and surveilling journalists: 4) “[e]stablish an independent commission of enquiry into cases of spying on journalists”; 5) ensure the protection of journalistic sources’ confidentiality; 6) secure media pluralism; 7) “[a]dopt mechanisms for protecting journalists”; 8) stop arbitrarily restricting internet access; 9) cancel restrictions on visits to certain states and territories; 10) protects the right of foreign journalists to report in India. 

The Digital Silk Road: China and the Rise of Digital Repression in the Indo-Pacific. The report, published by ARTICLE 19, interrogates digital influence in Cambodia, Malaysia, Nepal, and Thailand. As China broadens the scope of its technology and partnerships in normalizing the “authoritarian approach to digital governance,” the study sets out to understand China’s digital superpower aspirations by unpacking its regional strategies. “This report shows that dual infrastructure and policy support from China, in the hands of authoritarian states, has contributed to increasing restrictions on freedom of expression and information, the right to privacy, and other acts of digital repression,” Michael Caster, ARTICLE 19’s Asia Digital Program Manager, comments. Defining the Digital Silk Road as an umbrella term for digital policies that are part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the report explains China’s domestic digital landscape, outlines the evolution of the country’s domestic and foreign digital policies, and offers case studies on the digital infrastructure and governance in each of the four focus countries. The report concludes with recommendations to governments, the internet freedom community, and the private tech sector.  

● The Signal x HRF: The Long Game. In partnership with The Signal, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is releasing The Long Game - a limited series newspaper on the struggle between authoritarianism and democracy. The first issue features a piece on the spread of anti-democratic technology and the use of AI for political repression, interviews with Miranda Patrucić, Bosnian investigative journalist, and social scientist Francis Fukuyama, who approaches the question, “Why is democracy struggling so much around the world?”, an article on egregious human rights violations in Northwest China, and a take on “political hostage taking” by the world’s authoritarians.

● Latin America: IAPA Launches Initiative for Justice and the Memory of Murdered Journalists. Last month, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) launched an initiative that calls for combating impunity in crimes against journalists and commemorates the names and stories of those journalists who were murdered in Latin America over the last decades. Titled “Voices Claiming Justice,” the initiative releases monthly statements highlighting impunity cases that IAPA has been documenting. The campaign started with Gerardo Bedoya Borrero, Colombian journalist and the Opinion section editor of El País newspaper in Cali, Valle del Cauca department. In this work, Bedoya denounced “the connections between military forces, political leaders, and drug traffickers.” He was shot dead on March 20, 1997. This month, the initiative brings up the story of Mexican journalist Alfredo Jiménez Mota, who covered organized crime for El Imparcial, Hermosillo, Sonora state, and disappeared nineteen years ago at the age of 25. IAPA urges the Mexican authorities to continue investigating his case.