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.
NEW YORK –The leaders of China, Nigeria, and Turkey are among 10 world figures identified by the U.S. based Committee to Protect Journalists as “Enemies of the Press.” All are responsible for brutal campaigns against journalists and press freedom, as documented by CPJ in its ongoing monitoring of press freedom violations worldwide. The Enemies of…
Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Jan. 13–When this country opened the way for an independent press at the turn of the decade, the blossoming of newspapers of nearly every political persuasion was widely hailed as a critical stepping stone toward true multiparty democracy. But here, as elsewhere in Africa, rather than marking a clean break with an…
Independent Nigerian journalist Nosa Igiebor has been languishing in prison since his arrest in December 1995. He was jailed for his critical coverage of the country’s military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha. Though he was placed in solitary confinement, Igiebor was hardly alone. In fact, a record 182 journalists around the world were in jail at…
On Dec. 23, 1995, six agents of Nigeria’s State Security Service (SSS) arrested Nosa Igiebor, the editor in chief of the best-selling weekly magazine Tell, as he prepared to leave his Lagos home for work. Igiebor, a 1993 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, had just resurfaced after months in hiding. While he was…
CPJ’s 1995 report surveys 101 countries The bullet-ridden wall pictured on the cover is a detail from a photograph taken in Somalia by American photojournalist Dan Eldon of Reuters. Eldon, Associated Press photojournalist Hansi Krauss, and Reuter colleagues Hosea Maina and Anthony Macharia were murdered in July 1993 by a Somali crowd angered by the…
Abu Abdul Rahman Amin, leader of the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria His insurgent faction has claimed responsibility for many of the 58 assassinations of journalists in Algeria over the past three years. Rahman Amin has threatened all secular journalists with death. “Those who fight with the pen,” he proclaimed, “shall die by the sword.”…