Nigeria / Africa

For some delegates, just getting to the West African Journalists Association (WAJA) regional conference in Dakar, Senegal, was an impressive achievement. While his colleagues used more conventional modes of transportation, Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) president Frank Kposowa navigated his way out of the country by night in a hired motorized dugout canoe. The…

Executive Director William A. Orme, Jr., who was interviewed on CNN International, Fox News “In Depth,” MSNBC “Online,” and numerous radio shows about Attacks on the Press in 1997, traveled to California for the April 6 launch of the book at a program at the Freedom Forum in San Francisco. He also addressed the regional conference…

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” —Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

On May 3, in conjunction with World Press Freedom Day, CPJ announced its annual choices of the top 10 Enemies of the Press worldwide. Those who made the list this year, as in the past, earned the dubious distinction by exhibiting particular zeal for the ruthless suppression of journalists. For the second consecutive year, the…

The 10 Worst Offenders of 1997

Three weeks after exiled Nigerian journalist Dapo Olorunyomi spoke of his imprisoned wife’s plight at an April CPJ roundtable on Gen. Sani Abacha’s media crackdown, she was released. Nigerian authorities had held Ladi Olorunyomi, a journalist and women’s rights advocate affiliated with the Independent Journalism Center in Lagos, for 68 days without criminal charges. Within…

Internet Edition No. 53

The promise of a democratic society was fleeting in Sierra Leone, a country that ushered in an elected government under President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah in March 1996. After a grace period when newspapers began to be published, the state launched a campaign of intolerance against the print media, attempting to cow them into self-censorship or…

Letters to CPJ CPJ comes to the aid of journalists who have been attacked, imprisoned, censored, or harassed. The Committee fights to get journalists out of jail and lets those who are being persecuted for their reporting know that CPJ and others are working on their behalf.