When the world’s leaders get together next week in New York  for the United Nations General Assembly debate, some of the world’s most  notorious press freedom violators will take the podium and address their fellow  heads of state and the global public, according to a draft speakers list  obtained by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Leaders responsible for horrific  records of impunity in journalist murders will also be strongly represented.

Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will speak.

Equatorial  Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo will speak.

High-ranking ministers from Eritrea, North  Korea, and Syria will speak.

In Iran, Ahmadinejad leads a government that uses mass imprisonment of  journalists as a means of silencing dissent and quashing  critical news coverage. Since 2009, a once-robust reformist media has been  battered by a government onslaught that includes the banning of publications  and the mass arrests and imprisonments of journalists on anti-state charges.  Imprisoned journalists are subject to horrible conditions including solitary confinement,  physical abuse, and torture, CPJ research shows.