Africa

On May 12, 2012, intelligence agents in the capital Bamako summoned editor Biram Fall of the private biweekly Le Prétoire for interrogation, according to local news reports and Agence France-Presse.

On World Press Freedom Day last week, Nigeria's Information Minister, Labaran Maku, publicly asserted that the country's media "is one of the freest in the universe." On paper, Nigeria's 1999 Constitution guarantees the freedom of the press to "uphold...the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people." But seven journalists who attempted to put this principle to practice on World Press Freedom Day experienced a different reality -- one all too common for independent journalists working in Africa's most populated nation.

New York, May 11, 2012--Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo must immediately release two journalists who have been detained without charge since Wednesday over their story criticizing a government official, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

The guidance is hardly clear. At a Columbia University event last week pegged to the release of the new CPJ Journalist Security Guide, one journalism student said he and his classmates are getting contradictory advice. Many J-school professors, he said, have encouraged him and others to just get up, go overseas, and try to make it as a freelancer. But the experienced journalists speaking at the event advised caution.

New York, May 10, 2012--Kenyan authorities must immediately investigate recent death threats against a Kenyan journalist, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Local businessman Armstrong Pino allegedly threatened Joel Eshikumo, a reporter for the Weekly Citizen and a political columnist for the weekly Western Times, in public on Saturday over photographs the journalist had taken of him in court on April 27, local journalists told CPJ. Eshikumo told CPJ that unidentified callers had threatened him every night since Saturday, saying they would burn his house down and telling him to be prepared to die over the pictures he had taken of Pino in court.

New York, May 9, 2012--Ethiopia's main, state-owned printing company has directed newspaper publishers to censor any content that may draw government prosecution under the country's anti-terrorism law or face cancellation of their printing contracts, according to local journalists and news reports.

New York, May 8, 2012--State prosecutors requested a life sentence today for Burundian radio reporter Hassan Ruvakuki who was imprisoned after airing a November interview with a purported rebel leader, according to news reports.

Will China's quickly expanding media presence in Africa result in a fresh, alternative, and balanced perspective on the continent--much as Al-Jazeera altered the broadcast landscape with the launch of its English service in 2006--or will it be essentially an exercise in propaganda?

To commemorate World Press Freedom Day on May 3, CPJ published a list of the 10 most censored countries, citing Equatorial Guinea as the fifth worst offender. In response, the Minister of Information and government spokesperson, Jerónimo Osa Osa Ecoro, dismissed the analysis of the country's press situation as biased.

"We are going to communicate with those international media organizations who are out to destroy the image of the country," Ecoro told me last week. "They have a biased opinion of the situation in the country."

New York, May 4, 2012--An Ethiopian court has cited the editor of a leading independent newspaper for contempt after his paper published the verbatim courtroom statement made by the imprisoned journalist Eskinder Nega during his trial, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the ruling, which illustrates the growing severity of censorship in Ethiopia.