CPJ is honored to present its 2024 International Press Freedom Award to Nigerien journalist Samira Sabou.
Samira Sabou is one of Niger’s most prominent investigative journalists, who publishes mainly on her Facebook page and is the president of the Association of Bloggers for Active Citizenship (ABCA), an organization that advocates for freedom of expression and the rights of women and youth. Previously, she worked as a consultant for the Croissance Actualité Afrique (C2A) newspaper, directed the Economic and Social Development Information Magazine (MIDES) news website, and reported with the state-owned National Office of Publishing and Press (ONEP).
Throughout her prestigious career, Sabou has been arrested, detained, and subjected to years of legal harassment because of her reporting on governance issues. In response to the various legal proceedings brought against her, she stopped working for the media and only publishes on her social media accounts.
In July 2023, the Nigerien military seized control of the government in a coup, overthrowing the democratically elected president. In September 2023, four men in plainclothes arrested Sabou without warning at her mother’s home. She was held by the men in an unknown location for eight days and then delivered to the judicial police, where she was able to contact her lawyer. Eleven days after being arrested on suspicion of maintaining “intelligence with a foreign power” and espionage, Sabou was provisionally released. The case is ongoing, though the espionage allegation was subsequently dropped.
Separately, in January 2022, Sabou and another Nigerien investigative journalist, Moussa Aksar, were convicted for violating the cybercrime law. Their appeal of the case is still pending. In 2020, Sabou was arrested on cybercrime charges and spent 48 days in detention while she was pregnant. This case also remains open. The challenges Sabou faces in continuing to cover Niger are similar to those faced by journalists across the Sahel, working under post-coup governments and in a context of insecurity.
The text of Samira Sabou‘s acceptance speech, as prepared for delivery and translated into English, is below.
Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests.
To the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that created this framework for convening, to all the people here and elsewhere, and to all the institutions that believe that the work of journalists must be supported, I am deeply grateful to you.
Currently, we are witnessing major upheavals in the world, upheavals punctuated by hotbeds of war, endemic poverty in certain regions, injustice, sudden and unexpected changes of regime. This is the place to ask: What would the world be without the microphones, cameras, and pens of journalists?
From Soweto to Biafra, Gaza and Ukraine, we recall that journalists have helped to show the world the injustices that must be corrected, the tragedies linked to war that must be stopped, the governance that must be improved, and so on.
Many of our colleagues have lost their lives in the exercise of this noble profession, we bow before their memory. To those who had to go into exile, leaving family and comrades to try to stay alive, to those who languish unjustly in prison, we express here our deep empathy.
For my part, it is difficult if not impossible to erase the painful episodes of our multiple arrests during the coverage of public demonstrations, the assaults by the police at my residence, not to mention my imprisonment while I was several months pregnant. I am still moved by the thought of these painful events linked to the exercise of my beautiful profession.
How many memories my pen has immortalized from prison. Indeed, after 48 days of detention I published two articles publicly exposing the detention conditions that deserve to be improved. Following my articles, the prisoners were given three meals a day instead of one, the open-air spaces where we slept and which were exposed to the elements were renovated, the use of the punishment cell dating from the colonial era where a prisoner died during my stay was ended.
“HOPE,” we keep! Hope allows us to stay standing, even if by survival instinct we are often obliged to bend, to retreat, to apply self-censorship! We have hope that things will change in terms of freedom of the press, expression, and opinion on the digital space in Niger, where the profession of online journalist is still not recognized, but simply tolerated. But we must recognize that our country Niger has made progress because it is neither the best nor the worst in this area.
We are members of the Association of Bloggers for Active Citizenship and, in collaboration with parliamentarians, and national and international institutions, we are campaigning for change. We hope to obtain a legal framework that recognizes online journalism as a professional activity, protected, respected, and not criminalized. We recall that this lack of legal recognition goes beyond Niger. It extends to several countries in West Africa, following the efforts of governments to strengthen the legal framework on cybercrime. Thus, some provisions contained in these laws on cybercrime are in contradiction with the international treaties on freedom of the press, expression, and opinion ratified by our states. Our efforts to reconcile these frameworks will protect journalists like me.
Iwill stop here, reiterating the hope that the work of journalism will help build a much fairer world, a better world, a world of peace.
Thank you.