2016

On October 26, 2016, a Hong Kong journalist was attacked by a group of protesters while covering a rally outside of the Legislative Council building.

Four representatives of the Kano State Hisbah Board, a local security agency set up to enforce its interpretation of Sharia law, on August 27, 2016, assaulted two journalists from private broadcaster Express Radio, according to news reports. The religious police were angry that Express Radio correspondent Abdullahi Isa brought two female journalists–Hauwa Musa Abdullahi, a…

Philipbert Browne, the publisher of Liberia’s Hot Pepper newspaper, was arrested at his office and jailed at the Monrovia Central Prison in the Liberian capital on October 7, 2016, for libel on the orders of a Civil Law Court over a story in his paper titled, “During Ebola Time: ‘I Lost My Virginity'” published the…

A crew from international broadcaster Al-Jazeera were detained on October 18, 2016, shortly after returning to Mogadishu from assignment, and released on October 20.

Cuban state security officers on October 11 briefly detained Elaine Díaz Rodríguez, one of Cuba’s most prominent independent journalists, along with five of her colleagues from Periodismo de Barrio (Neighborhood News) and two freelancers working with them, while the team attempted to report on storm damage caused by Hurricane Matthew in northeastern Cuba Periodismo de…

Two contributors to the Azerbaijani broadcaster Meydan TV, which has broadcast from Berlin since 2014 out of concern for the safety of its staff, received death threats on October 4, 2016, according to press reports.

Plainclothes police officers on September 15, 2016, detained Festus Poquie, a journalist with Liberia’s New Democrat newspaper, from his office and took him to the Liberia National Police headquarters in the capital Monrovia, where he was detained and interrogated for several hours.

A group of unidentified men on September 27 confiscated a special supplement of one of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest tabloids, Extra, that reported on a corruption investigation into a candidate in municipal elections, the newspaper reported.

Ghanaian Police Inspector General John Kudalor on May 26, 2016, told reporters in the capital Accra that police were considering blocking Facebook, Twitter and all other social media during general elections scheduled to be held in December 7, according to media reports.

Officers of the Bureau of National Investigation, Ghana’s national security agency, arrested Ghanaian-Lebanese columnist and author Fadi Dabbousi on September 23, 2016, upon his arrival from Lebanon at Kotoka International Airport, according to news reports.