In-depth

They lived on opposite sides of the world from each other, and yet, they were alike in every way. Gauri Lankesh and Daphne Caruana Galizia were murdered in 2017, the former in Bangalore, India, and the latter in Malta, for having continued to carry out their investigations at all costs, ignoring the harassment campaigns against them. The journalist collective Forbidden Stories has taken on their investigations.

One year after the assassination of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, her loved ones and colleagues have not let go of their right to justice. This report sheds light on the most prominent judicial courses and investigations, drawing on a private interview with Shireen’s brother and the General Director of the Al-Haq organization which documented, very accurately, the crime of her assassination at the hands of the Israeli occupation.

Seen from the outside, political and cultural phase in Italy would even be interesting from the perspective of feminist analysis. For the first time since the end of the World War II, both the national government and the largest opposition party are led by two women, one the opposite of the other.

Morgan Large is a field journalist in Brittany, France, who works at Radio Kreiz Breizh (Côtes-d'Armor). In her daily flagship show, she tackles environmental topics, and her investigations—particularly those on the Breton productivist system—have caused her to become the target of threats and violence.

I’m an Egyptian researcher in my thirties working with “The Sex Talk- بالعربي” (The Sex Talk-in Arabic) initiative. I’m passionate about architecture and feminism, and I practice resistance as an essential part of my daily life. I started thinking about how to define space after a colleague asked me the following question: “What are the spaces even available for feminists to participate in public space?” This made me think, what is intended by “public space” in women’s case?

In an environment governed by racist laws and practices dominated by the occupation, its policies, and by complex procedures on both sides, Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip find themselves completely silenced, persecuted for free speech, and limited within the countless restrictions to their freedom of expression, both in the field and online.

Although the press sector in Tunisia is known to consist mostly of women, this is not reflected in the number of female journalists in media decision-making positions. And when some women do get these positions, the situations reek of political exploitation and opportunism, there being an ulterior motive to giving a woman access to this role.

It would have been surprising if women took up as much space in Algerian media as men do, when they only exist as a minority in the public sphere. If one were to rely on television broadcasts, they would think that Algeria is a country devoid of women, as this is what the images broadcast on national news imply. To find these women, one must be interested in the cooking, family, beauty, and tabloid sections.

I never thought that this day would come again—the day that exercising my profession as a journalist would become scary.

Two weeks before the publication of my investigative piece, and just one day after Decree 54 was issued, the director of Bolt in Tunisia called me, threatening to sue me according to this new decree. He bragged about the decree’s various articles that could lead to a prison sentence, fully intending to intimidate me and stop me from publishing the investigative piece. That was when I realized that this decree would be used like a sword, hung above journalists’ necks.