On World Press Freedom Day the global community pauses to honor the courage of journalists and truth-tellers who risk their lives to expose injustice.
While we honor journalists killed in Gaza, imprisoned in Russia, silenced in China, or banned from Indian-administered Kashmir, we must not look away from those under threat in our own backyard.
World Press Freedom Day is not just about journalists abroad—it is about holding every country, including the United States, accountable to the principles it claims to uphold.
Today, we must do more than just reflect–we must act.
The freedom of the press is being attacked. Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University, was a co-writer of an op-ed in her student newspaper.
The opinion piece in The Tufts Daily was a powerful, fact-based call for moral accountability. She urged Tufts to take notice of the democratic voice of its own student government regarding the events in Gaza. This was the fulfillment of a civic duty, grounded in international law, historical precedent and ethical clarity.
For this, her student visa was cancelled. She was aprehended by plainclothes U.S. immigration officers near her apartment, denied bond and labeled a “danger to the community.”
The U.S. State Department has presented no evidence linking Ozturk to illegal activities. She now fights for her freedom from an ICE detention center, treated not as a student or journalist but as an enemy of the state.
Ozturk’s detention is part of a broader pattern of shutting down dissent through fear. This is a dangerous and deliberate erosion of civil liberties, particularly targeting those with the least institutional protection: international students, immigrants or their allies. When the state criminalizes speech, especially speech rooted in truth and nonviolence, it sets a precedent that threatens us all.
In light of this recent event, Student Press Law Center and other student media organizations issued a Student Media Alert on April 4. Now more than ever, students are afraid of being persecuted for writing news stories and featuring opinion pieces which go against United States’ foreign and domestic policies.
The freedom of the press is under attack, despite it being enshrined within the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Let us not forget: the right to speak, to write, to report, and to challenge power is not a privilege. It is a right. And that right must be defended especially when it is most inconvenient to those in power.
amena ikhlaq • May 3, 2025 at 11:24 am
So well written