Africa

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki says he will reconsider the deeply flawed communications legislation that he signed into law at the beginning of the year. Kibaki said he would direct the Information Ministry and attorney general to consider the concerns of Kenya's media and present them to the cabinet for possible legislative revision. CPJ and other press freedom advocates have pointed out that the Communications Amendment Act significantly curtails press freedom.

New York, January 9, 2009--Zimbabwean photojournalist Anderson Shadreck Manyere, who was arrested on December 24, was remanded in custody today by a court in Harare despite allegations that he was tortured while in police detention, according to local journalists. Manyere is expected to return to court on January 23. 

New York, January 8, 2009--Detained Gabonese journalist Gaston Asseko, who is in need of medical attention, must be released immediately, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. 

New York, January 7, 2009--The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the ongoing police persecution of two Ugandan journalists. The police's Media Offences Department has repeatedly interrogated the two over a story critical of the government's handling of an international security operation against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army last month, according to a local lawyer and journalists.

January 4, 2009

Colin Freeman, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Telegraph
José Cendon, freelance

ABDUCTED

Freeman, a British foreign correspondent for London's Sunday Telegraph, and Cendon, a Spanish freelance photojournalist, were released January 4 after four weeks in captivity, according to multiple reports. 

New York, January 2, 2009--A government soldier killed Radio Shabelle reporter Hassan Mayow Hassan, shooting the veteran journalist twice in the head after stopping him in the Somali town of Afgoye on Thursday morning, three local journalists told the Committee to Protect Journalists today. The journalists said they had interviewed witnesses to the killing. 

We issued the following statement in response to the killing of Somali reporter Hassan Mayow Hassan, who was shot dead today in Afgoye, a town 18 miles (30 km) south of the capital Mogadishu. Hassan, a veteran correspondent for Radio Shabelle, was killed by unidentified gunmen while covering a conflict between two militia groups, according to local reports...