Kenya / Africa

  
A young Kenyan listens to the news on the radio in this March 2013 file photo (Reuters/Joseph Okanga)

Kenyan journalist threatened and assaulted

New York, June 8, 2017–Kenyan authorities should credibly investigate and swiftly bring to justice those responsible for attacking and threatening Emmanuel Namisi, a broadcast journalist for the Royal Media group, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

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Fiscal Blackmail

The Kenyan government withdraws advertising when newspapers step out of line By Alan Rusbridger In some parts of the world, it is still possible to silence a journalist with a sharp blow to the side of the head. But as newspapers the world over struggle with the financial disruption of digital technologies, governments are finding…

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Journalist beaten by Kenyan police, told he ‘cannot fight them with a pen’

Kenyan police on March 22 threatened and assaulted Isaiah Gwengi, a correspondent for The Standard daily newspaper, according to the journalist and media reports.

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Lawyers confer on the floor of Kenya's High Court in Nairobi, next to a copy of the country's constitution, March 8, 2013. (Reuters/Steve Crisp)

Kenyan court finds criminal libel laws unconstitutional

New York, February 6, 2017–Today’s ruling by Kenya’s High Court that the country’s criminal defamation law is unconstitutional is a welcome step toward safeguarding press freedom and free speech, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

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Kenya detains British newspaper correspondent Jerome Starkey

Nairobi, December 9, 2016–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Kenyan authorities to release Jerome Starkey, the Africa correspondent for The Times of London, who was detained shortly after arriving in Nairobi last night.

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LGBT Reporting in Africa

On a recent trip to Kenya, I sat with S., a gay refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the cramped, one-room apartment he shares with three friends, all straight. The four share a bed, and none know S. is gay. The floor is covered in a vibrant yellow vinyl, their belongings clutter every…

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Kenyan journalist held overnight at police station

David Odongo, a journalist with the privately owned weekly Nairobian newspaper was summoned to Nairobi’s Embakasi police station for questioning the evening of April 15, 2016, according to the Kenya Union of Journalists and news reports. Not long after he arrived, the union and news reports said, police arrested him and held him overnight.

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A man reads a copy of Kenyan daily, the Nation. Gado, whose political cartoons were regularly featured in it, says his contract with the paper was terminated. (AP/Ben Curtis)

Gado blames government pressure as cartoonist’s contract at Kenya’s Nation ends

For 23 years Godfrey Mwampembwa has been a prominent and quick-witted observer of the political scene in East Africa. But all that changed last month when the cartoonist, known as Gado, was told his contract at Kenya’s biggest newspapers, the Nation, would not be renewed.

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Kenya detains blogger for two days

Kenyan police arrested freelance journalist and blogger Yassin Juma on January 23, after he used social media to post photos of the aftermath of a deadly, January 15, Al-Shabaab attack on an African Union military base in Somalia, according to press reports.

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Kenyan journalist arrested

Kenyan police arrested journalist Elijah Kinyanjui Maina in the town of Nakuru, roughly 160 kilometres (99 miles) northwest of Nairobi, on January 12, 2016, and released him that evening, according to news reports. Maina is managing editor of the website Nakuru County News, which focuses on local news.

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