Angela Quintal/CPJ Africa Program Coordinator

Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, worked as a journalist for more than two decades in South Africa, including as editor of the Mail and Guardian. She is a former secretary-general of the SA National Editors' Forum, edited The Witness and The Mercury, and was presidential correspondent during Nelson Mandela's term as South Africa's first democratically elected president. Follow her on LinkedIn.

CPJ joins letter calling for release of journalists, others arbitrarily detained in Cameroon

The Committee to Protect Journalists on Thursday, February 3, joined 26 other civil society organizations in calling on President Paul Biya to release all those arbitrarily detained in Cameroon for acts of free expression, including at least four journalists. The open letter, published during the Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon, notes that the continent’s…

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Partner of journalist missing in Mali says she’ll only be at peace when he returns home

Freelance French journalist Olivier Dubois, 47, did what he would normally do ahead of an assignment. He gave his partner and mother of his children, Deborah Al Hawi Al Marsi, a piece of paper with names and contact numbers in case of an emergency. Each time Olivier returned safely home to the Malian capital, Bamako,…

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South African journalist Sam Sole on landmark court victory: “2008 surveillance was the tip of the iceberg”

South Africa’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, handed down a landmark judgment on February 4 that not only protects journalists and their sources from surveillance abuse, but also upheld a lower court’s ruling that the insidious practice of the bulk interception of ordinary citizens’ data and communication is illegal. The ruling, documented by CPJ, was…

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A woman walks past Rapid Intervention Battalion members as they patrol in the city of Buea in October 2018. CPJ and others are calling on the ACHPR to address human rights violations in Cameroon's Anglophone regions. (Reuters/Zohra Bensemra)

African Union must act on Cameroon’s human rights violations

The Committee to Protect Journalists joined 64 other civil society organizations in calling on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) to address serious and systematic human rights violations in Cameroon, including the jailing of journalists.

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AFP correspondent Deyda Hydara, front, pictured in November 1999. (AFP/Seyllou)

Deyda Hydara’s daughter: ‘I am still crying’ for murdered Gambian journalist

At Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) on July 22, army officer Lieutenant Malick Jatta named former President Yahya Jammeh as the mastermind behind the murder of prominent editor Deyda Hydara on December 16 , 2004. He said Jammeh had given the direct order to assassinate Hydara, an outspoken critic who was the managing…

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People take pictures with cells phones during the formal announcement of election results in Pretoria on May 11. Journalists covering the election had to contend with online harassment, doxxing, and threats. (AFP/Phill Magakoe)

Discredited, threatened, attacked: challenges of covering South Africa’s election in the digital age

In the lead up to South Africa’s elections in May, the Electoral Commission of South Africa accredited CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Angela Quintal as an international observer, monitoring press freedom. Quintal found that unlike 1994–when she covered the violence of the country’s first democratic elections–journalists in 2019 cited online harassment and threats as the biggest…

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Military police patrol the streets of Gorongosa, in central Mozambique, on November 19, 2013. A radio journalist in Mozambique has been held in pretrial detention since January, 2019. (Reuters/Grant Lee Neuenburg)

CPJ joins calls for immediate and unconditional release of Mozambican radio journalist Amade Abubacar

Johannesburg, April 11, 2019 — The Committee to Protect Journalists and 37 other civil society groups today issued a joint statement urging Mozambican authorities to immediately and unconditionally release community radio journalist Amade Abubacar, who has been in pre-trial detention since his arrest on January 5.

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FrontPageAfrica publisher Rodney Sieh, pictured on his release from prison in November 2013. Sieh says journalists in Liberia continue to face threats and harassment for their critical reporting. (AP/Mark Darrough)

Q&A: Rodney Sieh on how Liberia’s press is faring under Weah presidency

Rodney Sieh, editor-in-chief and publisher of Liberian investigative outlet FrontPageAfrica, knows first-hand the harassment and risks critical journalists in his country face. In 2013, CPJ documented how he was sentenced to prison over unpaid fines in a criminal defamation case.

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In defense of Uganda’s Red Pepper

CPJ has included eight staffers of the controversial Ugandan tabloid Red Pepper in its 2017 global census of imprisoned journalists. Some may disagree with that decision.

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Supporters of President Edgar Lungu's party celebrate his re-election in August. The country's press has been harassed during Zambia's election year. (AFP/Dawood Salim)

For Zambia’s press, election year brings assaults and shut down orders

Zambia’s press has come under sustained assault in this election year, with station licenses suspended, journalists harassed or arrested for critical coverage, and one of the country’s largest privately owned papers, The Post, being provisionally liquidated in a move that its editors say is politically motivated.

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