Africa

Lagos, Nigeria, October 5, 2012–Chadian authorities are abusing the judicial and law enforcement systems to silence news coverage critical of the government’s performance, censoring publications and targeting one editor with an unjust criminal conviction. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the government to immediately halt its actions.

Nairobi, October 3, 2012–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a police raid on a news production company in Belgravia, a suburb north of the capital, on September 26 in which several journalists were detained and equipment confiscated.

Security agents arrested Nasir Fazol, a reporter and printing technician for the independent daily Citizen, on September 5, 2012, and released him three days later without charging him, according to news reports.

Police from the semi-autonomous republic of Somaliland detained two journalists without charge on September 13, 2012, and released them four days later, according to local journalists.

Nairobi, September 28, 2012–Two Somali journalists have been killed in Mogadishu in the past 24 hours, one in a brutal targeted attack, according to local journalists and news reports. 

A radical militant Islamist group released an 18-minute video on May 1, 2012, that threatened attacks on at least 14 local and international news outlets, according to news reports. In the video, Boko Haram, a group seeking the imposition of Sharia law in northern Nigeria, accused the outlets of biased reporting and crimes against Islam…

At least five radio stations were attacked in March 2012 as Tuareg separatists, allied with extremist Islamist militants, pushed the Malian army back from the northeastern region of Gao, according to news reports.

Armed men in plainclothes raided the offices of CNN in the commercial capital of Lagos on January 16, 2012, amid nationwide protests over hikes in fuel prices, according to local journalists and news reports.

Nairobi, September 21, 2012–Unidentified gunmen killed veteran Somali journalist Hassan Yusuf Absuge in Mogadishu this morning, just hours after he had reported on an explosion that killed 14 people including three of his colleagues.