Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned by the recent violent attack on Araya Tesfa Mariam, a journalist working for the Amharic-language weekly Ethiop. On October 1, unidentified assailants attacked and brutally beat Mariam near his home in the capital, Addis Ababa. According to local journalists, Mariam is still receiving medical…
New York, October 8, 2003—Paul Kamara, founding editor of Sierra Leone’s popular For Di People newspaper, has been detained by police three times since Friday, October 3, in connection with that day’s lead story. According to news reports, on October 3, police arrested Kamara, held him for six hours at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID),…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned by the continued imprisonment of Ibrahim Souley, the publication director of the private weekly L’Enquêteur. Souley is expected to face trial tomorrow on charges of spreading propaganda and “inciting ethnic hatred.”
New York, September 29, 2003—Police detained three journalists today from Kenya’s oldest daily newspaper, the East African Standard, which is based in the capital, Nairobi. Managing Director Tom Mshindi, Associate Editor Kwamchetsi Makokha, and Sunday editor David Makali reported to the police at around 1:00 p.m. after receiving a summons. According to Mshindi, the police…
New York, September 26, 2003—Police in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, yesterday charged nine journalists from the Daily News with violating Section 83 of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) by practicing journalism without accreditation. The journalists, who were summoned to the Harare central police station yesterday morning, were on a list of…
New York, September 23, 2003—Abdoulie Sey, editor-in-chief of the private, biweekly Independent, was released from detention yesterday evening in Gambia, said sources in the capital, Banjul. On September 19, three men in an unmarked car abducted Sey in front of the newspaper’s offices in Banjul. Sey was subsequently held incommunicado at the headquarters of the…
New York, September 22, 2003—Four directors of the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), the company that owns Zimbabwe’s only independent daily, the Daily News, were arrested today and charged with violating the repressive Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), according to ANZ Chief Executive Sam Sipepa Nkomo. Earlier today, Nkomo and three…
New York, September 19, 2003—Today, the Ministry of Communications lifted the ban against Radio Publique Africaine (RPA), which was ordered shut “for an indefinite period” on Tuesday, September 16. The order stemmed from an interview the station aired with Pasteur Habimana, a spokesman for the rebel National Liberation Forces, about the government’s closure of the…
New York, September 19, 2003—Yesterday evening, police again occupied the offices of the Daily News and prevented journalists from putting out a Friday edition of the paper. The move was in defiance of a High Court ruling that same day allowing the newspaper to reopen and directing police to return confiscated equipment. Journalists at the…