“The aggressive treatment meted out to journalists by Erbil security forces while covering a peaceful protest is deeply concerning,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York. “We urge Iraqi Kurdistan authorities not to target journalists during protests, which has been a recurring issue.”

Kurdistan has been in a financial crisis since the federal government began cutting funding to the region after it started exporting oil independently in 2014. In 2024, the Federal Supreme Court ordered Baghdad to pay Kurdistan’s civil servants directly but ongoing disagreements between the two governments mean their salaries continue to be delayed and unpaid.

Since the end of Kurdistan’s civil war in 1998, the semi-autonomous region has been divided between the dominant Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Erbil and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Sulaymaniyah. While the KDP has discouraged the teachers’ protests, the PUK has sometimes supported them, including through affiliated media outlets.

At the February 9 protest, a crowd of teachers from Sulaymaniyah tried to reach Erbil, the capital, and were stopped at Degala checkpoint, where CPJ recorded the following attacks:

• Pro-opposition New Generation Movement NRT TV camera operator Ali Abdulhadi and reporter Shiraz Abdullah were stopped from filming by about seven armed security officers, known in Kurdish as Asayish, according to a video posted by the outlet.

“One of them chambered a round [into his gun]. I tried to leave but one of them attempted to strike me with the butt of a rifle, hitting only my finger. Another grabbed my camera and took it,” Abdulhadi told CPJ.

• Diplomatic’s reporter Zhilya Ali collapsed from teargas, a video posted by the privately owned digital outlet showed.

“There are still wounds on my face from when I fell,” she told CPJ, adding that she was taken to hospital and given oxygen.

• An ambulance took pro-PUK digital outlet Zhyan Media’s reporter Mardin Mohammed and camera operator Mohammed Mariwan to a hospital in Koya after they were teargassed.

“I couldn’t see anything and was struggling to breathe. My cameraman and I lost consciousness for three hours,” Mariwan told CPJ.

• Pro-PUK satellite channel Kurdsat News reporters Gaylan Sabir and Amir Mohammed and camera operators Sirwan Sadiq and Hemn Mohammed were teargassed and their equipment was confiscated, the outlet said.

• Privately owned Westga News said five staff — reporters Omer Ahmed, Shahin Fuad, and Amir Hassan, and camera operators Zanyar Mariwan and Ahmed Shakhawan — were attacked and teargassed. Ahmed told CPJ that a security officer grabbed a camera while they were broadcasting, while Fuad said another camera, microphone, and a livestreaming encoder were also taken and not returned.

• Pro-PUK Slemani News Network reporter Kochar Hamza was carried to safety by protesters after she collapsed due to tear gas, a video by the digital outlet showed. She told CPJ that she and her camera operator Sivar Baban were treated at hospitals twice.

“My face is still swollen, and I feel dizzy,” she told CPJ.

• A team from Payam TV, a pro-opposition Kurdistan Justice Group satellite channel, required treatment for teargas exposure.

“We were placed on oxygen and prescribed medication,” reporter Ramyar Osman told CPJ, adding that camera operator Sayed Yasser was hit in the knee by a rubber bullet.

• Madah Jamal, a reporter with the pro-opposition Kurdistan Islamic Union Speda TV satellite channel, told CPJ that he was also teargassed.

• Pro-PUK digital outlet Xendan’s reporter Shahen Wahab told CPJ that she and camera operator Garmian Omar suffered asthma attacks due to the teargas.

• Pro-PUK satellite channel Gali Kurdistan’s reporter Karwan Nazim told CPJ that he had to stop reporting because he couldn’t breathe and asked his office to send additional staff.

“I had an allergic reaction and my face turned red. I had to go to the hospital,” he said.

Raided and arrested

Abdulwahab Ahmed, head of the Erbil office of the pro-opposition Gorran Movement KNN TV, told CPJ that two unplated vehicles carrying Asayish officers followed KNN TV’s vehicle to the office at around 1:30 p.m., after reporters Pasha Sangar and Mohammed KakaAhmed and camera operator Halmat Ismail made a live broadcast showing the deployment of additional security forces by the United Nations compound, which was the protesters’ intended destination.

“They identified themselves as Asayish forces, forcibly took our mobile phones, and accused us of recording videos. They checked our social media accounts,” Sangar told CPJ.

KakaAhmed told CPJ, “They found a video I had taken near the U.N. compound on my phone, deleted it, and then returned our devices.”

In another incident that evening, Asayish forces arrested pro-PUK digital outlet Politic Press’s reporter Taman Rawandzi and camera operator Nabi Malik Faisal while they were live broadcasting about the protest and took them to Zerin station for several hours of questioning.

“They asked us to unlock our phones but we refused. Then they took our phones and connected them to a computer,” Rawandzi told CPJ, adding that his phone was now operating slowly and he intended to replace it.

“They told us not to cover such protests,” he said.

CPJ phoned Erbil’s Asayish spokesperson Ardalan Fatih but he declined to comment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On Saturday, June 10, police in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad opened a criminal and terrorism investigation into freelance U.S.-based journalists Khan and Sehbai, along with two former army officers, for allegedly “inciting people to attack military installations, spread terrorism, and create chaos” on May 9 after the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, according to news reports and the two journalists, who spoke with CPJ by phone.

Separately, on Tuesday, June 13, Islamabad police opened a similar criminal and terrorism investigation into Shakir, a freelance journalist based outside of Pakistan, Moeed Pirzada, U.S.-based editor of the news website Global Village Space, and another former army officer, according to news reports and the two journalists, who spoke with CPJ by phone.

The allegations were brought against the accused in relation to unspecified social media posts and videos by the journalists, according to copies of the first information reports, which cite sections of the penal code including criminal conspiracy and abetting mutiny, and the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, which carries a maximum punishment of death or life imprisonment.

“It is unconscionable that foreign-based Pakistani journalists Wajahat Saeed Khan, Shaheen Sehbai, Sabir Shakir, and Moeed Pirzada face potential death sentences under terrorism investigations in retaliation for their critical reporting and commentary,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Authorities must immediately drop these investigations and cease the relentless intimidation and censorship of the media.”

Since Imran Khan’s May 9 arrest, when unprecedented protests targeting police and military installations erupted throughout the country, journalists have been arrested, attacked, and harassed. Mainstream Pakistani news channels have ceased coverage of the former prime minister following military pressure. Anchor Imran Riaz Khan has been missing since May 11 following his arrest at Punjab’s Sialkot Airport, his lawyer Azhar Siddique told CPJ via messaging app.

Khan, Sehbai, Shakir, and Pirzada each critically analyzed the former prime minister’s arrest and aftermath on their social media and YouTube channels.

Khan, whose YouTube-based political affairs channel has around 205,000 subscribers, told CPJ he believes authorities are using the unrest as an excuse to target the four journalists for their previous and ongoing extensive critical coverage of the government and army.

The Pakistani government has submitted several unsuccessful requests to Twitter to take down Khan’s content commenting on the political unrest in Pakistan, according to Khan and emails from Twitter to the journalist, which CPJ reviewed. Khan told CPJ that he fears the government will reference the terrorism investigation to social media companies to bolster attempts to censor him online.

Sehbai, former editor of The News International newspaper and a dual U.S.-Pakistan citizen with around 1.8 million subscribers on Twitter and 8,000 subscribers to his political affairs YouTube channel, told CPJ that he believes that he was targeted because of his criticism of the army and said authorities were trying to intimidate him into silence.

Pirzada, who has dual Pakistani and British citizenship and runs a political affairs YouTube channel with around 392,000 subscribers, told CPJ that he believes the case was an attempt to silence him. A former anchor for the privately owned broadcaster 92 News, Pirzada fled Pakistan to the U.S. in November 2022 following the killing of Pakistani anchor Arshad Sharif.

Shakir, who worked as an anchor with ARY News, told CPJ that he went into exile following a series of investigations opened into him and other journalists, including slain anchor Sharif, beginning in April 2022.

CPJ’s calls and messages to Islamabad Police Inspector-General Akbar Nasir Khan and Information Minister Maryam Aurangzeb did not immediately receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Since May 18, police across Pakistan have filed multiple first information reports (FIR), which open an investigation, against Abraham, an anchor with the privately owned broadcaster BOL News and the host of a popular current affairs YouTube channel, Khan, an anchor with the privately owned broadcaster Express News, and Sharif and Shakir, both anchors with the privately owned broadcaster ARY News, according to news reports and the journalists, who spoke with CPJ via phone and messaging app. 

The spate of investigations come amid physical, legal, and online harassment of journalists following the parliament’s election of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on April 11, after ousting former Prime Minister Imran Khan in a no-confidence vote. On May 4, Prime Minister Sharif tweeted that the new government was “fully committed to freedom of press & speech.”

The four journalists are known as supporters of former Prime Minister Khan, according to news reports.

Among other offenses, the multiple FIRs all accuse the four journalists violating sections of Pakistan’s penal code pertaining to abetment of mutiny and publication of statements causing public mischief by criticizing state institutions and the army in their journalistic work and unspecified social media posts. Abetment of mutiny can carry life imprisonment and an unspecified fine, and the public mischief accusation can carry a prison sentence of seven years and an unspecified fine, according to the law. 

“Pakistan authorities’ launch of a blizzard of harassing criminal investigations into journalists seen as sympathetic to the former ruling party makes a mockery of its claims to uphold press freedom,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Authorities should withdraw the investigations into Sami Abraham, Imran Riaz Khan, Arshad Sharif, and Sabir Shakir and ensure that members of the press do not face retaliation for their commentary on the military or any other institutions in Pakistan.”

In at least three of the FIRS – which were filed by police in Quetta, Pishin, and Chaman in southwest Balochistan province – Abraham, Sharif, and Shakir are co-accused of working together to malign state institutions through their journalistic work and commentary, according to those three journalists and copies of the FIRS which CPJ reviewed. 

In at least one FIR– filed by police in Dadu in southeast Sindh province– Sharif and Shakir are accused of using derogatory language about the army and state institutions and drawing analogies to controversial historical figures through their journalistic work and commentary, according to the two journalists and news reports. 

Abraham told CPJ via phone that he is the subject of at least one additional FIR, filed by police in Attock in northeast Punjab province on May 18, accusing him of planning a conspiracy and criticizing state institutions and the army on his YouTube channel, without citing specific videos.  

Sharif told CPJ that since May 19, police have registered at least two additional FIRs against him, in Karachi and Hyderabad in southeast Sindh province. The Karachi police’s FIR against Sharif, which CPJ reviewed, broadly cites a May 12 interview that Sharif provided to journalist Matiullah Jan outside the Islamabad High Court, in which he discussed the court’s ruling that day extending his April 28 protection order against the Federal Investigation Agency and Islamabad police, and later asserted that the army should not intervene in state affairs. Sharif told CPJ that he received the order after plainclothes officers he believed to be with the agency showed up at the his home at 1:30 a.m. on April 28.

On May 21, police in Mirpur Khas, in Sindh province, registered an additional FIR against Shakir, which accused him of criticizing state institutions, according to Shakir and a report by his outlet. 

Khan told CPJ via messaging app that police have filed three FIRs against him in total. 

In one of the FIRs, filed on May 22 by Dhabeji police in the Thatta district of Sindh province, a complainant is cited accusing Khan of writing about the army and state institutions using “derogatory and provocative language” on social media, according to news reports and a copy of the FIR Khan posted on Twitter.

Khan did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for copies of the other two FIRs.

Three of the four journalists — Sharif, Abraham, and Khan — sought protective bail, a court order protecting them from arrest in relation to the FIRs. 

On May 23, the Islamabad High Court granted protective bail to Sharif and Abraham until at least May 30, pending a hearing that day, and ordered the Interior Secretary of Pakistan to disclose the total number of FIRs filed against the journalists, according to news reports and Sharif. 

(Another journalist, Moeed Pirzada, CEO and editor of the online news website Global Village Space and an anchor with the privately owned broadcaster 92 News, was granted protective bail in the same May 23 court order after he said he received threatening phone calls, the reports said. Pirzada did not respond to CPJ’s calls and WhatsApp messages requesting comment.) 

On May 23, the Lahore High Court granted protective bail to Khan in relation to two of the FIRs; his protection lasts until May 27 in one case and May 31 in the other, according to news reports. 

Information Minister Maryam Aurangzeb did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app.The office of Ambreen Jan, director-general of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s external publicity wing, did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via email and messaging app. The offices of Abdul Quddus Bizenjo, chief minister of Balochistan; Syed Murad Ali Shah, chief minister of Sindh province; and Hamza Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab province, did not respond to CPJ’s emailed requests for comment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.