New York, February 15, 2001 — Mercedes Sayagues, Harare correspondent for the South African weekly Mail and Guardian, has been ordered to leave Zimbabwe within 24 hours, according to the government-owned Herald newspaper. The decision to expel Sayagues came as the government of President Robert Mugabe announced a clampdown on permits for foreign journalists seeking…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the continued harassment of independent journalists in your country under the pretext of investigating the failed coup attempt of January 8, 2001. Most recently, on February 10, as many as thirty armed men and three uniformed police officers broke into the printing press where the independent Abidjan daily Le Jour is produced. The intruders forced a security guard to lie prone while they searched the premises for “arms and mercenaries.” A police helicopter hovered over the factory while the search was being performed. The men all claimed to be law enforcement officers, but did not have a search warrant. They claimed to be acting on an anonymous phone tip, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
February 6, 2001 — Police yesterday detained Pius Foray, owner and editor of the independent Freetown daily Democrat, after his newspaper ran a story suggesting that President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah feared for his life following the postponement of elections. He was released later the same day. The article was written by Foray and ran on…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly condemns yesterday’s early-morning bombing of the printing press of the independent Daily News in Harare. Sunday’s attack is the second such bombing of the private daily in less than a year. These violent attacks appear to be part of a deeply disturbing campaign against the Daily News and its staff, which have suffered frequent and ongoing harassment at the hands of police and top-ranking officials of the ruling ZANU-PF.
New York, January 4, 2001 — Of the 24 journalists killed for their work in 2000, according to CPJ research, at least 16 were murdered, most of those in countries where assassins have learned they can kill journalists with impunity. This figure is down from 1999, when CPJ found that 34 journalists were killed for…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly protests your government’s continued harassment of journalist Rafael Marques, who was refused the right to leave the country this morning despite official assurances, and a signed court order, stating clearly that all travel restrictions against him had been lifted.
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in ANGOLA. New York, April 12, 2000 — On April 11, a Luanda court convicted two journalists of defaming a senior government official and gave them suspended sentences, sources in Angola told CPJ. Graca Campos, a news editor at the Luanda-based weekly Angolense, was sentenced to…
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in THE GAMBIA. New York, April 12, 2000 — Popular Gambian journalist Omar Barrow, a news editor with the privately-owned Senegalese radio station SUD FM, which broadcasts in the Gambia, was shot dead on April 10 by a uniformed member of the Gambian army’s anti-riot unit,…