Africa

January 2009News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

Dear President-elect Obama: I am writing as chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists to seek your leadership in reaffirming America’s role as a staunch defender of press freedom throughout the world. Journalists in many countries who risk their lives and liberty upholding the values of free expression look to the United States for support.

New York, January 9, 2009–Zimbabwean photojournalist Anderson Shadreck Manyere, who was arrested on December 24, was remanded in custody today by a court in Harare despite allegations that he was tortured while in police detention, according to local journalists. Manyere is expected to return to court on January 23. 

New York, January 8, 2009–Detained Gabonese journalist Gaston Asseko, who is in need of medical attention, must be released immediately, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. 

New York, January 7, 2009–The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the ongoing police persecution of two Ugandan journalists. The police’s Media Offences Department has repeatedly interrogated the two over a story critical of the government’s handling of an international security operation against the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army last month, according to a local…

January 4, 2009 Colin Freeman, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Telegraph José Cendon, freelance ABDUCTED Freeman, a British foreign correspondent for London’s Sunday Telegraph, and Cendon, a Spanish freelance photojournalist, were released January 4 after four weeks in captivity, according to multiple reports. 

New York, January 2, 2009–A government soldier killed Radio Shabelle reporter Hassan Mayow Hassan, shooting the veteran journalist twice in the head after stopping him in the Somali town of Afgoye on Thursday morning, three local journalists told the Committee to Protect Journalists today. The journalists said they had interviewed witnesses to the killing. 

CPJ’s Joel Simon, Robert Mahoney, and Nina Ognianova pay tribute to journalists who died in 2008. The toll was highest in Iraq, but conflicts in South Asia and the Caucasus were deadly as well. Impunity in journalist murders in Russia, Philippines, and Mexico were top issues.

We issued the following statement in response to the killing of Somali reporter Hassan Mayow Hassan, who was shot dead today in Afgoye, a town 18 miles (30 km) south of the capital Mogadishu. Hassan, a veteran correspondent for Radio Shabelle, was killed by unidentified gunmen while covering a conflict between two militia groups, according…