Africa

Abuja, November 15, 2019 – Nigerian authorities should investigate attacks by security forces on journalists at a recent protest in Abuja, and hold those responsible to account, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

He couldn’t have known it at the time, but when a Moroccan court sentenced editor Mohammed al-Herd on August 4, 2003, to three years in prison, he was emblematic of a new trend, one that would accelerate and continue to the present day.

On October 21, 2019, police arrested Achiko Ngaya, editor of the privately owned newspaper Les Nouvelles du Soir, in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ngaya told CPJ. The journalist said he was detained for five days and charged with criminal defamation.

On September 8, 2019, bodyguards of Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio attacked three journalists who were covering a football match in Freetown, the capital, according to the journalists, who spoke to CPJ, and news reports.

The Committee to Protect Journalists joined 64 other civil society organizations in calling on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) to address serious and systematic human rights violations in Cameroon, including the jailing of journalists.

New York, October 29, 2019—Authorities should drop all charges against journalists Joe Ogbodu and Prince Amour Udemude, and reform Nigeria’s penal code to ensure that journalism is not criminalized, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

CPJ’s 2019 Global Impunity Index spotlights countries where journalists are slain and their killers go free Published October 29, 2019 Somalia is the world’s worst country for the fifth year in a row when it comes to prosecuting murderers of journalists, CPJ’s 2019 Global Impunity Index found. War and political instability have fostered a deadly…

Mahmud Tim Kargbo, a freelance reporter in Sierra Leone, was arrested and detained twice in September 2019 after Miatta Samba, an appeals court judge, lodged a complaint with the police against him for a report published September 9, 2019, on his Facebook page and in a WhatsApp group that criticized Samba’s decision to grant bail…

New York, October 24, 2019 — The Committee to Protect Journalists today expressed concern over a Nigerian court’s decision to grant anonymity to witnesses set to testify against journalist Agba Jalingo and deny the public access to the courtroom during the trial.

On October 5, 2019, Dominique Dinanga, a reporter for the privately owned Top Congo FM radio station, was attacked by supporters of the ruling Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) party at a rally in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where former Prime Minister Bruno Tshibala was to receive…