Jonathan Rozen

In the early hours of February 1, unknown gunmen set fire to an office of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission and a police station in the country’s southeastern Anambra state. Days earlier, gunmen had attacked and killed soldiers and policemen at checkpoints along a road that connects nearby Enugu and Ebonyi states. The incidents underscored…

The January 16, 2019, murder of Ghanaian journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela, who was gunned down by unidentified men months after threats by a local politician, sent shockwaves through the country’s press corps and yielded promises from leaders to find the killers and bring them to justice. But four years later – despite police assurances of progress and two arrests – nobody has been…

One year after news broke about a list of over 50,000 phone numbers allegedly selected for surveillance with Pegasus spyware, journalists around the world continue to live and work with the fear that their phones can be used to track their conversations and penetrate all the personal and professional data stored on their devices. The…

When Botswana’s government sought to pass a new law early this year that would have allowed for warrantless surveillance, local opposition came swift. Authorities eventually introduced judicial oversight, which local media groups considered a success, but the Botswana police’s history of searching journalists’ devices and accessing their telecom information remains cause for concern. “We do…

Posting on Facebook from Benin’s Central Office for Repression of Cybercrime on November 18, journalist Patrice Gbaguidi wrote that authorities had summoned him for a second time in two weeks over a defamation complaint about one of his articles. That day, he and Hervé Alladé, the owner of Le Soleil Bénin Infos newspaper where Gbaguidi…

The photos showed blood-soaked concrete, a gashed open thigh, and an injured protester grimacing in pain on the ground. Taken by photojournalist Eti-Inyene Godwin Akpan on October 20, 2020, the images tell the story of Nigerian forces’ mass shooting of anti-police brutality protesters at Lagos’ Lekki Toll Gate, an incident the government continues to deny….

When Komlanvi Ketohou fled Togo in early 2021, he left behind his home, his family, and his cell phone that the gendarmerie seized when they arrested and detained him over a report published by his newspaper, L’Independant Express. In July, Ketohou, who goes by Carlos, learned that the phone number connected to the device they…

Tsaone Basimanebotlhe was not expecting security agents to appear at her home in a village outside Gaborone, Botswana’s capital, in July 2019, she told CPJ in a recent interview. But they didn’t come to arrest or charge her, she recalled – they came for her devices, hunting for the source for an article published by…

The murder of Spanish reporters David Beriain and Roberto Fraile by unidentified attackers last week in eastern Burkina Faso was a tragic example of the dangerous working conditions for  journalists in the country, where the government has struggled to contain a rise in militant activity in recent years.   Beriain and Fraile were kidnapped along with Rory Young, an Irish conservation worker, from an anti-poaching convoy…

Oratile Dikologang was naked when police officers pulled black plastic over his head during his detention in April 2020. It was difficult to breathe, but the interrogation continued, he told CPJ in a recent phone interview. “What are your sources, where do you get information,” he recalled them asking repeatedly. “It was the most painful…