Search: secrets and espionage laws, outcome sustained
The number of entries reflects the depth of this record, not the severity of a country's conduct.
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China (Hong Kong): conviction and 20-year sentence of the media owner Jimmy Lai under the National Security Law, 2025 to 2026
On December 15, 2025, the High Court of Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China with its own courts, convicted Jimmy Lai, founder of the newspaper Apple Daily, on two counts of "conspiracy to commit collusion with foreign force…
Detention and violence · Stage Eliminate · Head of government John Lee · Sustained
Zimbabwe's Patriotic Act criminalizes journalists' contact with foreign governments
President Emmerson Mnangagwa signed the Patriotic Act, which criminalizes meeting foreign governments or officials with intent to harm Zimbabwe's sovereignty, with penalties up to death for advocating armed intervention and up to ten years…
Secrets and espionage laws · Stage Punish · Head of government Emmerson Mnangagwa · Sustained
Vietnam: journalist Pham Doan Trang is sentenced to nine years for anti-state "propaganda"
A Vietnamese court sentenced Pham Doan Trang, founding editor of the independent outlet The Vietnamese, to nine years in prison for distributing anti-state "propaganda" under a national-security provision of the country's penal code.
Secrets and espionage laws · Stage Eliminate · Head of government Nguyen Xuan Phuc · Sustained
United States search warrant names Fox News reporter James Rosen a possible co-conspirator in a leak case
A 2010 FBI search-warrant affidavit, unsealed in 2013, described Fox News reporter James Rosen as a possible co-conspirator in violating the Espionage Act because he sought classified information from a State Department analyst, and used t…
Surveillance and subpoenas · Stage Punish · Head of government Barack Obama · Sustained
United States creates an Office of Censorship and a wartime code for the press
Twelve days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Office of Censorship. Its director, Byron Price, a former Associated Press editor, wrote a Code of Wartime Practices asking newspapers and broadcasters…
Prior restraint · Stage Pressure · Head of government Franklin D. Roosevelt · Sustained
Dutch East Indies: Colonial authorities end publication of the communist newspaper Mawa under Penal Code Article 153 bis, 1926
In 1926, colonial authorities in the Dutch East Indies ended publication of Mawa, a newspaper linked to the Communist Association of the Indies in Soerakarta, through repeated use of Article 153 bis of the colonial Penal Code, which crimin…
Licensing and closure of outlets · Stage Silence · Head of government Andries Cornelis Dirk de Graeff · Sustained
Britain's Official Press Bureau controls newspaper coverage of the First World War
Weeks after Britain entered the First World War, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith told the House of Commons that the Official Press Bureau was the sole channel through which the Admiralty, the War Office and other departments released naval…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government Herbert Henry Asquith · Sustained