Assailants stormed the premises of Nepal Republic Media, a media company in the capital, Kathmandu, on December 20, 2012, attacking journalists and vandalizing the offices, according to news reports. Police arrested several of the attackers, who have identified themselves as members and supporters of the rightwing Shiv Sena Nepal party.

Several police officers in Dhaka, the capital, beat and briefly detained two photographers on December 11, 2012, as they covered clashes between police and supporters of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, according to news reports.

Burkina Faso's state-run media regulatory agency imposed a seven-day suspension on private daily Le Quotidien on December 13, 2012, after accusing its editor of repeatedly violating the press law, according to news reports.

Police detained freelance reporter Moctar Barry on November 15, 2012, in the central town of Sévaré, after he returned from reporting on events in Gao, an Islamist-occupied city in the northern half of Mali, local journalists said.

Security agents assaulted Sylvie Ndinga, video journalist for the private broadcaster MNTV, and detained Yvon Le Pape, a reporter for the same station, in Brazzaville, the capital, on September 17, 2012, according to local journalists and news reports.

Armed agents from the National Security Agency in N'Djamena, the capital, beat two reporters on November 16, 2012, and detained them in handcuffs on the premises of a private hospital, according to local journalists.

On September 30, 2012, Yves Phono Kepmi, a journalist with Radio Terre Nouvelle, was beaten by police officers in Chad's southwestern Mayo-Kebbi Est region for asking questions about a civil disturbance he was reporting on, according to local journalists.

Security forces arrived at the offices of Radio Télévision Autonome du Sud Kasaï (RTAS), in the south central town of Miabi, on August 15, 2012, and forced the station off the air, according to local press freedom group Journaliste en Danger (JED). The agents also confiscated the station's transmitter, JED said.

At least three journalists working in the restive, mineral-rich province of North Kivu have fled into hiding in August and September 2012 after saying they were threatened in reprisal for their reporting, CPJ has learned.

The Higher Council for Broadcasting and Communication, or CSAC, the DRC's state-run media regulatory agency, announced in August 2012 that it would indefinitely ban broadcasters from airing talk shows and call-in programs about the ongoing conflict between the government and rebels in the eastern provinces of the country, according to news reports.

Congolese Communications Minister Lambert Mende banned private daily Le Journal indefinitely on June 29, 2012, in connection with an editorial that he said incited racism and tribalism, local press freedom group OLPA reported.

Four armed men abducted Franck Fwamba, editor of the monthly magazine Mining News, and forced him into an unmarked car at around 6 p.m. on June 6, 2012, in the southern city of Lubumbashi, according to local journalists and the press freedom group Journaliste en Danger (JED).

On October 10, 2012, Israeli soldiers raided the home of Mohammed Atallah al-Tamimi, a Palestinian journalist for the private Tamimi Press Agency in the West Bank town of Nabi Saleh, according to news reports. Al-Tamimi was arrested and taken to an unknown location, news reports said. Authorities have not disclosed his whereabouts, condition, or the charges against him.

State security agents barred a journalist from covering an October 15, 2012, hearing of a Supreme Court case of seven prisoners on death row, according to local journalists and news reports.

Security agents arrested Nasir Fazol, a reporter and printing technician for the independent daily Citizen, on September 5, 2012, and released him three days later without charging him, according to news reports.

Police from the semi-autonomous republic of Somaliland detained two journalists without charge on September 13, 2012, and released them four days later, according to local journalists.

Two Egyptian journalists were assaulted on September 14, 2012, in two separate episodes while covering protests against an anti-Islam film, according to news reports.

A radical militant Islamist group released an 18-minute video on May 1, 2012, that threatened attacks on at least 14 local and international news outlets, according to news reports. In the video, Boko Haram, a group seeking the imposition of Sharia law in northern Nigeria, accused the outlets of biased reporting and crimes against Islam and also claimed responsibility for prior attacks on newspapers, news reports said.

At least five radio stations were attacked in March 2012 as Tuareg separatists, allied with extremist Islamist militants, pushed the Malian army back from the northeastern region of Gao, according to news reports.

Armed men in plainclothes raided the offices of CNN in the commercial capital of Lagos on January 16, 2012, amid nationwide protests over hikes in fuel prices, according to local journalists and news reports.

Soumaïla Abdoulaye Maïga, a presenter with community station Radio Soni in the northeastern town of Ansongo, went into hiding on April 13, 2012, after being warned of an imminent attack by separatist fighters of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), according to local journalists. After Maïga fled, the fighters raided his house and detained a fellow journalist and friend, local journalists said.

Members of Ansar Dine, a Salafist militant group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, shut down two local radio stations on March 27, 2012, as they seized the northeast town of Kidal from the Malian army, according to local journalists.

Militants belonging to the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), a Salafist group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, seized control of community station Radio Soni in the northeastern town of Ansongo on August 29, 2012, according to local journalists.

Two officials of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), a Salafist militant group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, raided the studios of Radio Annya in the northeastern town of Gao on August 20, 2012, according to the BBC.

Rebel fighters of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a separatist movement of ethnic Tuaregs in northern Mali, stormed the offices of private Radio Adar Khoïma in the northeastern town of Gao on April 3, 2012, according to local journalists and news reports. The rebels kidnapped a journalist and assaulted him, and forced the station off the air for 72 hours, the sources said.

Police in Conakry, the capital, briefly detained two journalists on August 31, 2012, while they were interviewing protesters demonstrating against a massacre of villagers by security forces on August 3, 2012.

Gambian authorities detained Thomas Fessy, the West Africa correspondent of BBC World News, for several hours at the capital's international airport on September 5, 2012, and ordered him to leave the country within 48 hours, the BBC reported. Fessy returned to Senegal on September 7, 2012.

Nigerian soldiers beat Leadership Newspapers reporter David-Chyddy Eleke, confiscated his camera, and arrested him for taking pictures of the demolition of buildings in Awka, in Anambra State in Nigeria's southeast region on September 6, 2012, according to local journalists and news reports. 

On September 5, 2012, the studios of TV+, a private television station in the capital, Libreville, owned by André Mba Obame, the country's main opposition leader, were attacked by six unknown assailants, Agence France-Presse quoted Editor-in-Chief Ismaël Obiang Nze as saying. In the attack around 3 a.m. local time, a security guard was hit on the head with a hammer, stabbed in the back, and tied up, but his injuries were not critical, Nze said.

The Colombian Supreme Court announced on August 27, 2012, that it would drop a defamation complaint against prominent journalist Cecilia Orozco Tascón, according to news reports. Five days earlier, the court released a statement saying it would file charges against Orozco, who writes a widely read column in the Bogotá daily El Espectador. The court also criticized a column by another journalist, María Jimena Duzán, which was published in the weekly Semana magazine.

Police in Dakar, the capital, summoned Alassane Samba Diop, director of Radio Futurs Médias (RFM), for four hours of questioning on August 25, 2012, over an interview he broadcast the night before with the leader of a hardline Islamist group, according to news reports.

On August 13, 2012, unidentified passengers illegally sitting on and hanging from rail cars of a moving train in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, assaulted two photojournalists for taking pictures of them from a pedestrian bridge, according to news reports. 

Two journalists of the pro-government TV station Al-Ikhbariya and their driver who were kidnapped on August 10, 2012, were freed by the Syrian army six days later, according to the state news agency SANA.

A group of armed men attacked the office of the local branch of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in the southern city of Warri on August 7, 2012, according to news reports. The men came with kegs of gasoline and threatened to lynch journalists and burn the office if they were not granted media coverage, news reports said.

Colombian journalist Élida Parra Alonso, who was kidnapped on July 24, 2012, by a local guerrilla group in the northeastern state of Arauca, was released on August 13, 2012, according to news reports. Parra hosts a program for Sarare Estéreo radio station and does community outreach work for Oleoducto Bicentenario, a company constructing an oil pipeline that it says will be the largest in the country, news reports said.

About 30 trucks from Transcaribe Trading (TCT), a local construction company in Panama City, surrounded the offices of the daily La Prensa on August 2, 2012, from around 10 p.m. until 1:30 a.m., preventing the paper's trucks and employees from leaving the premises, according to news reports. TCT workers told local journalists that they were there because the daily's reports were jeopardizing the future of the company, and thus their jobs, according to news reports.

A journalist in the northern breakaway republic of Somaliland was attacked by police while covering a child custody dispute in a local court on August 4, 2012, according to local journalists and news reports. 

Radio Gbafth, an independent community radio station in Tonkolili district, was attacked by supporters of a local politician on July 19, 2012, according to local journalists and the Media Foundation of West Africa, a Ghana-based press freedom organization. The politician, John Raka Conteh, also known as Potas, had been invited as a panelist on one of the station's programs to discuss the postponement of the local election, the reports said.

Two Tunisian journalists working for a local TV station were attacked by police officers on July 23, 2012, as they reported on the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to news reports.

Prominent Mexican journalist Sanjuana Martínez was arrested on July 5, 2012, in the state of Nuevo León under unclear circumstances related to a civil custody dispute, and was released from jail the following day, according to news reports. Martínez was detained by armed police, which is unusual in a civil case, the reports said.

Unidentified armed men wearing masks abducted Abdrahmane Keïta, editor of the private bi-weekly L'Aurore, in a public square in Bamako, the capital, at about 8:30 p.m. on July 2, 2012, according to local journalists and news reports. The gunmen dragged Keïta onto their vehicle while repeatedly kicking and beating him with truncheons, the reports said.

Journalist Abdulhamid Adiamoh was convicted on a contempt-of-court charge on June 28, 2012, and was ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 dalasi (US$3,100) or serve six months in jail with hard labor.

Habi Baby, an editor of the weekly Caravane, was arrested by soldiers at his home in Bamako, the capital, on June 12, 2012, after he published a story critical of Mali's security forces, according to local journalists and news reports.

Police in Lagos, the commercial capital, assaulted at least 10 journalists and confiscated their equipment on April 4, 2012, according to news reports. The journalists were covering a coroner's inquest into a 2010 traffic accident, the reports said.

Chinese activists Lü Jiaping, his wife Yu Junyi, and an associate, Jin Andi, were imprisoned in 2010 without their families being informed. The full details of their 2011 trial and sentences were not made public until 2012, according to the English-language Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

Throughout December 2011, HAAC, Benin's state-run media regulatory agency, summoned more than a dozen newspapers to public hearings and handed them sanctions ranging from a public apology to indefinite suspension, according to news reports. HAAC's president is appointed by Benin's head of state, and two-thirds of the agency's members are appointed by the government, CPJ research shows.

Police officers assaulted Alpha Oumar Diallo, a journalist for online newspaper Aminata, as he covered anti-government protests on May 10, 2012, in Conakry, the capital, according to news reports and local journalists.

On April 16, 2012, the Zimbabwe Republic Police in the southern border town of Beitbridge arrested Robin Hammond, a freelance photojournalist with dual U.K. and New Zealand citizenship, as he reported on migration between Zimbabwe and neighboring South Africa, government-controlled state daily The Herald reported.

On May 12, 2012, intelligence agents in the capital Bamako summoned editor Biram Fall of the private biweekly Le Prétoire for interrogation, according to local news reports and Agence France-Presse.

After the publication of CPJ's March 27, 2012, news alert on the deaths of Naseem Intriri and Walid Bledi during a Syrian military attack near the Turkish border, a human rights defender and diplomatic sources raised questions about the journalistic credentials of the deceased.

On March 29, 2012, Tran Thi Thuy Lieu was convicted of the murder of her husband, journalist Le Hoang Hung, after a one-day trial in southern Long An province. Hung died January 30, 2011, after he was set ablaze while sleeping in his home in Tan An, news reports said. Reports said Lieu, who had suffered gambling losses, was motivated by her husband's refusal to sell their home.

Igor Vinyavsky, editor of the independent weekly Vzglyad, was freed from a Kazakhstan prison on March 15, 2012, on the orders of an Almaty court, according to news reports. The journalist had spent two months in pretrial detention after being arrested by the KNB, Kazakhstan's security service, news reports said.