The Committee to Protect Journalist joined 25 civil society, human rights, press freedom and tech organizations, VPN companies as well as over a dozen journalists and activists, in a September 2, 2024, open letter calling for Apple not to comply with requests and orders to remove Virtual Private Network (VPN) apps from its App Store in Russia and to reinstate those it has already removed.

On July 4, Apple removed more than 20 VPN apps, including Red Shield VPN, Le VPN, HideMyName, PlanetVPN, AdGuard VPN, among others, from its Russian App Store following a request from Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor.

VPNs are popularly used to gain access to independent news sources outside of Russia’s near-total government censorship. Since the beginning of the Kremlin’s full-scale war on Ukraine in February 2022, authorities have permanently blocked Russian access to international and local independent media websites, as well as social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, X , and YouTube. Websites for individual publications by Russian and international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, among others, have also been blocked. 

Read the full joint letter here. 

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

This post was originally published on Radio Free.