This Magazine Gives Jailed Journalists Their Voices Back

From Reporters Without Borders

When you throw someone in prison, that person generally loses their voice along with their rights. That’s the logic for governments interested in suppressing the press—what better way than to imprison the rabble-rousers? Currently, an estimated 581 journalists, including several Nobel Prize holders, are incarcerated around the world for trying to expose corruption and hold leaders to account. 

What if we could give them back their voices and provide a platform for their ideas, insights and often harrowing personal stories? 

The NGO Reporters Without Borders partnered with the French biweekly magazine Society and BETC Paris to produce The Prison Papers—the first magazine developed alongside imprisoned journalists, as well as their families and lawyers. It also involved the collaboration of Maria Ressa, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist,and founder of Philippine investigative news site Rappler.

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The issue features eight incarcerated journalists, ranging from cellblock interviews to a profile of one whose whereabouts remain unknown. The campaign’s goal is to illustrate how important independent journalism is at a sensitive time for democracy that’s rife with disinformation.

Writers include Jose Ruben Zamora Marroquin, Guatemala’s most notorious prisoner and writer; Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, imprisoned for exposing gender apartheid by the Iranian regime; and Eritrean-Swedish journalist Dawit Isaak, serving the world’s longest prison sentence without trial.

“With an unprecedented number of journalists behind bars around the world, it is more crucial than ever that we find new and creative ways of keeping their stories alive,” says Rebecca Vincent, director of campaigns for Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Campaigner. “We are so pleased to partner with Society on this innovative project, lending our voices to some of the most emblematic figures of our time, whom powerful forces have tried so hard to silence. We hope seeing their stories in print will spur the world into action to secure their releases and to stop the relentless targeting of journalists once and for all.” 

The Prison Papers is available in English and French, and took nine months to make. Reporters Without Borders hopes leaders, and their associated regimes, will hear their message loud and clear:

You can jail a journalist, but the truth will out.