Africa

Zimbabwe's media has suffered much from repression, exile, and worse, and on December 18 it lost one of its most beloved and compassionate voices. Caroline Gombakomba, a reporter and radio host since 2003 for the Voice of America's Studio 7 broadcasts to the Southern African country, died in Silver Spring, Maryland. Gombakomba, 40, had been fighting breast cancer for years and in this second round met death with her customary serenity and courage.

With the death on Monday of Guinean President Lansana Conté, uncertainty hangs over what--or who--is to follow. Yet, as recently as last week, coverage of the poor health of the reclusive autocrat, who ruled this mineral-rich but poor West African nation since 1984, proved risky for the Guinean independent media. 

CPJ calls on President Mwai Kibaki to reject the recently passed Kenya Communications Amendment Bill, which includes provisions that would severely harm press freedom. 

New York, December 19, 2008--The only radio station in an Islamist-controlled town in southern Somalia was shuttered by militants in a raid last week, according to the station's director.

New York, December 18, 2008—For the sixth consecutive year, Iraq was the deadliest country in the world for the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists found in its end-of-year analysis. The 11 deaths recorded in Iraq in 2008, while a sharp drop from prior years, remained among the highest annual tolls in CPJ history.

New York, December 17, 2008--A journalist who disappeared in Zimbabwe on Saturday may be in police custody, journalists in Harare told CPJ.

This morning, police in Burkina Faso summoned four leaders of a march over the weekend that called for a renewed investigation into the unsolved 1998 assassination of investigative journalist Norbert Zongo. Among those questioned was Jean-Claude Meda, the president of the Association of Journalists of Burkina Faso, who told me that he received a call from a police captain on Sunday evening. 

Ten years ago on Saturday, the bullet-ridden bodies of investigative journalist Norbert Zongo and three friends were found in Zongo's burned-out car outside the capital of Burkina Faso.