Africa

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is dismayed to learn that twelve journalists with the independent daily newspaperThe Post have been summoned to appear in the High Court in Lusaka on November 1 on charges of espionage.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned by the arrest and continued detention of Rafael Marques, a freelance journalist who also represents the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa in Angola.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is once again writing to protest the continued detention of journalist Joseph Mbakulu Pambu Diana, who has now spent one year in prison without trial.

Islamabad, October 6, 1999 – After a two-hour hearing, the Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan dismissed a petition that sought to exclude embattled editor Najam Sethi from political life by having him declared non-Muslim. The petition was filed on June 24 by legislator Syed Zafar Ali Shah, a member of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s ruling…

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply dismayed that journalists Mark Chavunduka and Ray Choto of the Harare-based Sunday Standardnewspaper are to face trial in Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court on October 4, despite widespread international outrage over their case.

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned over the comments made by the Minister of Social Communication, Hendrik Vaal Neto, in an interview carried on state radio on June 1.

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is appalled to learn that your government has ordered the Burundian army to treat journalists as legitimate military targets. On September 9, Your Excellency’s Defense Minister, Colonel Alfred Nkurunziza, said in a speech broadcast on state radio that the army should consider all journalists as enemies, and therefore legitimate targets, if they entered the Bujumbura Rurale province near the capital, where the army is fighting ethnic Hutu rebels.

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to the defense of press freedom worldwide, is writing to protest in the strongest terms against the continued detention of Raphael Lakpe and Jean Khalil Sylla, publisher and reporter, respectively, at the independent daily newspaper Le Populaire.

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to the defense of press freedom worldwide, is writing to protest in the strongest terms against the continued detention of Raphael Lakpe and Jean Khalil Sylla, publisher and reporter, respectively, at the independent daily newspaper Le Populaire.

Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) deeply regrets the six-month jail sentence handed down to Tony Gachoka, publisher of The Post on Sundaymagazine, for contempt of court, and the exorbitant fine imposed on his publishing firm. Not only is the penalty disproportionate to the alleged offense, but the fairness of Gachoka’s trial is also in question.