Bashiir Noor Gedi

More than 80 journalists flee their home countries in the last year. Iraq and Somalia are the hardest hit. By Elisbeth Witchel and Karen Phillips

Attacks had become so pervasive in this conflict-riven state that the National Union of Somali Journalists described 2006 as "the most dangerous year for press freedom for more than a decade." Then came 2007--a year in which conditions grew dramatically worse.

With seven journalists killed in direct relation to their work, Somalia was the deadliest place for the press in Africa and second only to Iraq worldwide. The deaths came amid widespread violence in this Horn of Africa state, which has had no effective central government since 1991. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported that nearly 600,000 people had fled during the year, as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), backed by Ethiopian troops, clashed repeatedly with the militias of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a coalition of fundamentalist law courts that had held power for six months in 2006.

New York, October 19, 2007—The acting manager of the independent Somali station Radio Shabelle was assassinated outside his home in Mogadishu today by unknown gunmen, according to station employees and local journalists.

Bashiir Noor Gedi was attempting to return to his home in the Hamar Jadid neighborhood after he and other Radio Shabelle employees had been holed up in the station for roughly a week because of a series of threats, according to journalists who spoke with his family. More than a dozen Radio Shabelle staffers were still inside the station’s headquarters tonight, fearful of leaving the premises, according to Radio Shabelle Chairman Abdimaalik Yusuf, who is in exile in London.

CPJ Update December 2007 News from the Committee to Protect Journalists