Africa

New York, January 30, 2009--Reporter Francis Nyaruri was found decapitated and with his hands bound on Thursday in a forest in western Kenya. Nyaruri, who wrote for the private Weekly Citizen under the pen name Mong'are Mokua, had been missing since January 15, according to local journalists and relatives.

Freelance journalist Frank Chikowore visited CPJ this week after receiving the Tully Center Free Speech Award at Syracuse University. Chikowore received the award for his brave, ongoing reporting on the crisis in Zimbabwe. He has worked for two newspapers in Zimbabwe, including The Nation and the Weekly Times, which was closed down in 2005.

We issued the following statement in response to the killing of reporter Francis Kainda Nyaruri of the private Weekly Citizen, whose decapitated body was found Thursday in a forest in western Kenya.

New York, January 27, 2009--The editor of an independent newspaper in the West African nation of Niger was jailed Monday in connection with an investigative story alleging corruption in the finance ministry, according to local journalists. 

New York, January 26, 2008--Angry opposition supporters burned down two pro-government television stations in the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar today, a few hours after authorities destroyed the antenna of an opposition radio station, according to news reports and local journalists.

The Hong Kong police announced on Monday they would investigate the alleged assault on photographer Richard Jones by Zimbabwe's first lady, Grace Mugabe, while she was on vacation. On January 15, Jones claimed Mugabe ordered her bodyguard to hold the photographer down while she punched him repeatedly in the face near Hong Kong's exclusive Shangri-la Hotel, according to wire reports. 

On Friday, as we welcomed the release of a journalist kidnapped in Somalia, we received a compelling account from a freelance reporter working in the capital, Mogadishu. Our colleague describes the perils of working in a city where journalists operate at the mercy of warring insurgents and government troops, and throughout Somalia, one of the world's most dangerous nations for the press. 

New York, January 16, 2009--CPJ welcomes the release of a freelance Somali photojournalist and two Somali drivers on Thursday but remains deeply concerned for the fate of two foreign freelance reporters who have been held since their abduction on August 23, 2008, by unknown gunmen.

New York, January 16, 2009--The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about the health of a Zimbabwean photojournalist who was denied bail today despite allegations that he was tortured while in police detention in the capital Harare.