30 journalists embody struggle for freely reported environmental coverage

Africa

• Norbert Rucabihari - Burundi

Stories covered: waste disposal

Type of abuse: arbitrary arrest, threats

Norbert Rucabihari, a journalist working for the Buja 24media outlet and the Net Pressnews agency, where he covers stories related to governance and public discourse, was summarily arrested by four police officers on 3 April 2025 while taking photos on a bridge in Bujumbura for a story on waste dumping in Lake Tanganyika. He now fears for his safety because the Imbonerakure - a political youth movement affiliated to Burundi's ruling party that the UN has described as a militia - has promised to "correct" him.

• Akwasi Agyei Annim - Ghana

Stories covered: gold mining

Type of abuse: violence, prevented from filming

Akwasi Agyei Annim, a correspondent for Channel One TVand Citi FMin western Ghana, and Henry Fynn Emil and Jacob Adu-Baah, journalists working for Angel TVand ABC Newsrespectively, were aggressed and prevented from filmingan illegal mining operation in the Wassa Amenfi West district on 21 February 2025.

• Erastus Asare Donkor - Ghana

Stories covered: destruction of farmland, water pollution

Type of abuse: violence, confiscation of equipment

A well-known reporter for Multimedia Group Limited, Erastus Asare Donkor has received awardsfor his coverage of illegal mining and environmental degradation. He and a Multimedia Group crew were violently attacked on 20 October 2024 while investigating the destruction of farmland and water pollution by Edelmetallum Mining Resources Limited in Asumenya, in the southern Ashanti Region. More than ten armed men forced them to return to their vehicle and escorted them to a remote forested area, where they were beaten and their equipment was confiscated. For his safety, he was then forced to leave Ghana ahead of the general election in December 2024.

• Francis Ramanantsoa Mahasampo - Madagascar

Stories covered: illegal mining

Type of abuse: flagrant intimidation

Francis Ramanantsoa Mahasampo, a Midi Madagasikarareporter based in the southwestern city of Toliara, is well known for his coverage of social conflicts, protests and mining issues in the south of the country. He was openly threatened by the local prefecture in 2025 after providing live coverage of a protest against the controversial relaunch of the Base Toliara mining project.

• Alain Bashizi - Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Stories covered:environmental crimes, illegal financial flows, mining

Type of abuse: death threats

The founder of Gorilla FM, Alain Bashizi covers environmental crimesand, in recent years, has focused on the illicit financial flows and transnational trafficking that have helped consolidate the M23 rebellion. He has also written many articles for Radio France Internationale's Mondoblogand Africa Nouvelle Générationabout fossil fuel dependence, "green conflicts" linked to mining, and sustainable conservation strategies in South Kivu. He finally had to flee the DRC because of the many threats from the M23 rebels.

Latin America

• Marcos Wesley - Brazil

Stories covered: deforestation, illegal mining

Type of abuse: threats, intimidation, online harassment

Co-founder and coordinator of Tapajos de Fato, a media outlet founded in 2020 in Santarém (Para), Marcos Wesley has been forced to relocate to the city of Belém in the past year to protect his family from the constant threats to which they have been subjected. His media outlet has repeatedly received threats of various kinds in connection with its interviews and investigations concerning environmental issues and the rights of local communities in the face of deforestation, illegal mining and other social and ecological dangers.

• Katia Brasil - Brazil

Stories covered:deforestation, illegal mining, land seizures, violation of indigenous peoples' rights

Type of abuse:threats, intimidation, smear campaigns, baseless criminal accusations

Brazilian journalist Katia Brasil is one of the founders of Amazônia Real, a leading independent media outlet that focuses on defending the Amazon and its inhabitants. As a result of exposing the impact of deforestation, illegal mining, land grabbing and violations of the rights of indigenous peoples and traditional communities, she is subjected to threats, intimidation and smear campaigns aimed at hindering her journalistic work.

• Eliane Brum - Brazil

Stories covered:human rights, deforestation, illegal mining, climate crisis in the Amazon, defence of indigenous peoples and local communities

Type of abuse:threats, verbal attacks, smear campaigns, political and economic harassment

One of Brazil's leading investigative journalists, writer and documentary filmmaker Eliane Brum runs Sumauma, an independent media outlet based in the Amazon, which she co-founded to give voice to indigenous peoples. Her investigations expose deforestation, illegal mining and threats against forest defenders. At the front line of resistance to powerful political and economic interests, she regularly faces attacks and harassment.

• Jaime Vásquez - Colombia

Stories covered: access to water, corruption

Type of abuse: murder

Despite receiving police protection since 2022, journalist Jaime Vásquez was gunned down in April 2024 in his hometown, Cúcuta, a city located on the border with Venezuela. On his Facebook page, which had more than 72,000 followers, he had denounced the misappropriation of public funds and addressed social issues such as access to water and medical care. Members of Cúcuta's city council had previously tried to intimidate him after he supported his incisive remarks with legal arguments, and one of them even tried to attack him physicallyin 2022.

• Matías Rojas - Chile

Stories covered:local corruption, deforestation, illegal gravel extraction

Type of abuse:threats, intimidation, smear campaigns, car set on fire

Based in Chile's central Maule Region, Matías Rojas is a journalist specialising in investigating local corruption and socio-environmental conflicts related to gravel extraction. His car was set on fire in front of his home on 12 April 2025 after he received threats related to his journalistic work. He links this attack to his denunciation of municipal irregularities and environmental damage. The prosecutor's office is investigating the suspected involvement of local authorities and gravel sector entrepreneurs.

• Franklin Vega - Ecuador

Stories covered:biodiversity, deforestation, impacts of the petroleum industry and mining, social and environmental conflicts in the Ecuadorean Amazon

Type of abuse:phone threats, intimidation by government officials, baseless criminal accusations, smear campaigns

An Ecuadorean environmental journalist and founder of Bitácora Ambiental, Franklin Vega investigates biodiversity, deforestation and socio-environmental conflicts. In May 2024, he reported receiving threats from a Yasuni National Park official in connection with his critical reporting. In September 2024, he was publicly accused, without any evidence, of causing forest fires. He has continued his investigative reporting despite these attacks.

• Carolina Amaya - El Salvador

Stories covered: use of natural resources, protection of indigenous peoples

Type of abuse: threats, judicial proceedings

Ever since online media outlet MalaYerba's launch in February 2022, its director, Carolina Amaya, and her team have been repeatedly threatened in connection with their coverage of land and natural resource conflicts, the defence of indigenous communities, and corruption. She has also been the subject of legal action - which even targeted her father in 2023 - after she published an article linking President Nayib Bukele's inner circle to an ecosystem's destruction.

• Carlos Ernesto Choc - Guatemala

Stories covered:mining (Fénix nickel mine), environmental threats and pollution, rights of indigenous peoples, social and land conflicts

Type of abuse:baseless criminal charges, forced to relocate

A member of Guatemala's Q'eqchi' Maya indigenous community, Carlos Ernesto Choc Chub reports for the Prensa Comunitarianews website, documenting human rights violations and environmental damage related to the Fénix nickel mine in El Estor, his hometown. For covering his community's resistance, he has been subjected to constant harassment since 2017, including lawsuits, trumped-up charges and direct threats.

• Manuel Calloquispe - Peru

Stories covered: illegal gold panning in the Amazon, criminal mining groups

Type of abuse: death threats, harassment, physical violence

A Peruvian journalist based in the southeastern province of Madre de Dios, Manuel Calloquispehas specialised in covering illegal gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon for more than ten years, especially in the area around the gold-rush town of La Pampa. Freelancing for such media outlets as Inforegión, El Comercioand Latina TV, he investigates the activities of the mining mafias and their effects on the environment and local communities. The interior ministry gave him police protection after he received death threatstargeting his family in August 2025 that were directly related to his reporting. He has been subjected to constant harassment for years, including physical attacks, home invasions, theft of equipment and smear campaigns orchestrated by criminal networks.

Asia

• Uk Mao - Cambodia

Stories covered:illegal deforestation

Type of abuse:judicial harassment, arbitrary arrest

Uk Mao, a Cambodian environmental journalist working for Eagle News, was arbitrarily detainedon 16 May 2025 after investigating a case of illegal deforestation with two colleagues. His arrest was the latest step in a campaign of judicial persecutionagainst him by the Cambodian authorities. A total of 14 complaints have been brought against Uk Mao, most of them related to his reporting.

• Gerald Flynn - Cambodia

Stories covered: deforestation, destruction of protected forests

Type of abuse:denial of reentry to Cambodia

British environmental journalist Gerald Flynn was denied reentry to Cambodiaon landing at Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport on 5 January 2025, after being placed on a "blacklist". Three days earlier, he had appeared in a France 24report on the destruction of protected forests, which the environment ministry described as "fake news." Several activists interviewed were arrested and later released on the condition that they no longer cooperate with foreign media. Based in Cambodia since 2019, Gerald Flynn worked for independent media outlet Mongabayand chaired the Overseas Press Club of Cambodia.

• Chhoeung Chheng - Cambodia

Stories covered: illegal deforestation

Type of abuse: murder

Chhoeung Chheng, a 63-year-old journalist with the online media outlet Kampuchea Aphivath, was shot in the abdomenwhile investigating illegal logging in the Boeung Per Nature Reserve in northwestern Cambodia on 5 December 2024 and died from the injury two days later in a hospital in the nearby city of Siem Reap. An alleged illegal logger has been convictedof the shooting.

• Sneha Barve - India

Stories covered: illegal construction, collusion between local officials and businessmen

Type of abuse:intimidation, death threats, physical violence

Reporter Sneha Barve had already been the target of threats and attacksfor investigating the illegal exploitation of natural resources and links between elected officials and businessmen in recent years. She filed a complaint after a former MP threatened to kill her in July 2024, but her complaint did not prosper. She was heckled outside her office in February 2025. Then, while documenting an illegal construction site in a riverbed in Manchar (Maharashtra state) on 4 July 2025, she was surrounded by a dozen men led by local businessman Padurang Morde, who proceeded to give her a severe beating using wooden sticks to hit her on the face and back.

• Sumit Jha - India

Stories covered: deforestation

Type of abuse: arrest

A correspondent for media outlet South First, journalist Sumit Jha covers health-related stories, including those with an environmental dimension. Police arrested him on 30 March 2025 while he was covering student protests against the clearing of forested land on the University of Hyderabad campus. Although he had a press card, they confiscated his phone and drove him around in a police vehicle for a long time before finally taking him to Kollur police station, where he was released.

• Muhammad Rifky Juliana - Indonesia

Stories covered: industrial pollution

Type of abuse:physical attack

Eight journalists were physically attackedwhile covering an environment ministry inspection of a lead plant operated by PT Genesis Regeneration Smelting in Serang, on the island of Java, on 21 August 2025. Muhammad Rifky Juliana, a reporter for the regional news outlet Tribun Banten, had to be hospitalised with a head injury sustained during the attack, carried out by company security guards and uniformed police officers with machetes.

• Deo Montesclaros - Philippines

Stories covered:human rights, mining

Type of abuse:harassment, abusive judicial investigation, "red-tagging"

For covering human rights violations by leading mining companies allied with former President Rodrigo Duterte's administration, Philippine multimedia reporter Deo Montesclaros has been subjected to judicial harassment for years, including accusations - without any evidence - of colluding with communist armed groups. Known as "red-tagging", such accusations are often used by the Philippine authorities to label journalists as "subversives" or "terrorists" when they investigate subjects regarded as sensitive. Deo Montesclaros accuses the authorities of being behind an attempt to kidnap him in 2021. In January 2025, he was summoned by the police on charges of financing terrorism that carry a possible 12-year prison sentence.

• Shanmugam Thavaseelan - Sri Lanka

Stories covered: illegal sand extraction

Type of abuse: intimidation, aggression, death threats

Shanmugam Thavaseelan, a Tamil journalist based in Mullaitivu, a coastal town in northern Sri Lanka, and former president of the Mullaitivu Media Society, was accosted and threatened with death on 15 February 2025 while investigating illegal sand mining. Intercepted near the town of Mankulam by two men who tried to take his phone and ID card, he nonetheless managed to alert the police. The attackers then fled after threatening to kill him. Authorities have confirmed the illegal mining at several sites in the region. Two suspects were arrested shortly thereafter.

• Nguyen Van Hoa - Vietnam

Stories covered: pollution, contaminated sea water

Type of abuse: arbitrary detention, violence

In 2017, Radio Free Asia (RFA)journalist Nguyen Van Hoa covered protests about a toxic spill from the Taiwanese-owned Formosa steel plant in northern Vietnam that poisoned millions of fish and reduced thousands of Vietnamese fishermen to penury. For his reporting, he was sentenced to seven years in prison and three years of house arrest on a charge of "anti-state propaganda." He was repeatedly subjected to violence while detained and has been under house arrest since his release from prison in January 2024.

Europe

• Venelina Popova - Bulgaria

Stories covered: industrial sector, construction, waste management

Type of abuse: abusive court order to pay costs, denial of right to information

In July 2025, a Bulgarian administrative court ordered journalist Venelina Popova to pay more than 500 EUR for having used the Freedom of Information Act to request documents about a waste incinerator project in Galabovo, a town in south-central Bulgaria. The court's decision to not only uphold the mayor's refusal to provide the documents but also order Venelina Popova to pay the town hall's legal costs constitutes a worrying setback for the right to access information about an environmental issue of public interest.

• Inès Léraud - France

Stories covered: food industry, pollution by green seaweed

Type of abuse:abusive defamation suits, home invasions, death threats and social media harassment

French freelance journalist Inès Léraud has been subjected to many kinds of harassment, including online harassment, smear attempts and defamation suits in connection with her investigative reporting on Brittany's food industry, toxic seaweed, public health threats and local corruption. She is the author of Algues vertes, l'histoire interdite, a cartoon strip book based on three years of research into the spread of toxic green seaweed along Brittany's beaches, and co-founder of the investigative media outlet Splann!.

• Marian Koren - Slovakia

Stories covered: agriculture, waste, pollution, drought, biodiversity

Type of abuse:obstruction of right to information

Marian Koren and his colleagues at the EURACTIV Slovakia website submitted 20 questions of public interest to the environment and agriculture ministries from April 2024 to September 2025 without receiving any response, even though journalists and the public are guaranteed access to state-held information under Slovak law. This repeated refusal to provide information about major environmental and agricultural issues obstructs the work of the media and constitutes an attack on the right of access to information and public transparency.

• Olena  Mudra - Ukraine

Stories covered: renewable energy, wind power

Type of abuse:online harassment

A journalist based in Transcarpathia, a region in western Ukraine bordering Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, Olena Mudra was the target of an online smear campaignand hacking attempt in July 2025 after investigating a controversial wind farm project in the Carpathian Mountains.

Middle East

• Nada Arafat - Egypt

Stories covered: megaprojects, Nile water resources

Type of abuse:denial of permits to report in the field, obtain information

Nada Arafat, who has been covering environmental issues for the Cairo-based independent news website Mada Masrfor nearly six years, often finds it difficult if not impossible to travel to most of the country's desert areas, for which official permits are required. This includes several large-scale state projects such as the diversion of the Nile River in order to build and cultivate crops in the desert. Such projects are often spearheaded by the military or by powerful Egyptian or Gulf businessmen. These permit-related obstacles prevent her from gathering the data she needs or getting direct access to sources. Mada Masr and its journalists have been harassed repeatedly by the authorities for the past ten years.

• Zeina Shahla - Syria

Stories covered: drought, monopoly of natural resources

Type of abuse: dangers requiring self-censorship

When Syria's revolution began in 2011, Zeina Shahla changed the focus of her journalism and began covering humanitarian and social issues. Then, in 2022, she also began covering

environmental issues and helped create the environment section of Raseef22, an independent news website based in neighbouring Lebanon. She also reported on the drought affecting Syrian farmers, and corruption in natural resource management. As a result of her investigations into the Syrian government's monopoly of water resources under Bashar al-Assad, she was forced to use a pseudonym and censor herself for fear of reprisals.

• Sözcü newspaper - Türkiye

Stories covered: deforestation projects, gold mining

Type of abuse:judicial harassment

Cengiz Holding owner Mehmet Cengiz, a businessman close to President Erdogan, filed a lawsuit in March 2025 accusing 26 reporters and editors with the Turkish daily Sözcüof "incitement to hatred," "disobeying the law," "insult" and "disseminating misleading information" in 174 articles and editorials published between October 2024 and February 2025. Sözcühad criticized the government's cronyism and claimed that Cengiz Holding's mining projects threatened a million trees and farmland. The defendants include columnists Deniz Zeyrek, Necati Dogru, Saygi Ozturkand Emin Ozgonul, as well as several reporters and editors with the Sozcu.com.trwebsite, who are facing the possibility of 1 to 17.5 years in prison on these charges. In September 2025, a judge ordered the censorship of at least 15 articles published from April to August whose content he deemed "likely to undermine national security and public order."