New York, N.Y., March 10, 1999 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today issued a strongly worded condemnation of the Zambian government’s crackdown on The Post, now in the second day of a full-scale assault stemming from the Lusaka-based independent daily’s publication on Tuesday of an article questioning the country’s military preparedness. Zambian…
March 10, 1999 His Excellency President Frederick Chiluba State House Independence Avenue Lusaka, Zambia Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) writes to strongly condemn the arrests of Ms. Lubasi Mwangala Katundu, Joe Kaunda, Goodson Machona, Amos Malupenga, Brighton Phiri, and Kelvin Shimo, reporters for the independent daily newspaper The Post, and the current…
Independent Nigerian journalist Nosa Igiebor has been languishing in prison since his arrest in December 1995. He was jailed for his critical coverage of the country’s military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha. Though he was placed in solitary confinement, Igiebor was hardly alone. In fact, a record 182 journalists around the world were in jail at…
Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Jan. 13–When this country opened the way for an independent press at the turn of the decade, the blossoming of newspapers of nearly every political persuasion was widely hailed as a critical stepping stone toward true multiparty democracy. But here, as elsewhere in Africa, rather than marking a clean break with an…
On Dec. 23, 1995, six agents of Nigeria’s State Security Service (SSS) arrested Nosa Igiebor, the editor in chief of the best-selling weekly magazine Tell, as he prepared to leave his Lagos home for work. Igiebor, a 1993 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, had just resurfaced after months in hiding. While he was…