Ocak Isik Yurtçu had little to celebrate last July 24, Journalists Day in Turkey. “Nobody in the world has been sentenced to so many years in prison for articles others have written,” he said from his jail cell in an interview with the daily Yeni Yuzyil. Yurtçu, former editor in chief of the now-defunct daily…
The Committee to Protect Journalists sent an emergency mission to Turkey in July 1997 to press for the release of imprisoned Turkish journalists. CPJ Vice Chairman Terry Anderson led the delegation to support Turkish journalists’ growing condemnation of press freedom violations in their country.
For some delegates, just getting to the West African Journalists Association (WAJA) regional conference in Dakar, Senegal, was an impressive achievement. While his colleagues used more conventional modes of transportation, Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) president Frank Kposowa navigated his way out of the country by night in a hired motorized dugout canoe. The…
For Christine Anyanwu, former editor of the now-defunct The Sunday Magazine, the fact that Nigeria has vaulted to the ignominious spot as Africa’s top jailer of journalists, with 17 in prison at the end of 1997, would come as no surprise. Nor is it merely an abstract statistic to the 46-year-old mother of two: She is…