Africa

Last week, I attended an unusual event called the Courage Forum at which half a dozen speakers, from tightrope artist Philippe Petit and Sudanese rapper Emmanuel Jal to Virgin founder and chairman Richard Branson, talked about about overcoming fear.

Today, May 3, is World Press Freedom Day. But on this day, this year, I am not thinking about the dangers for the many journalists whose bylines I’ve come to associate with places like Mogadishu or Manila, Kabul or Islamabad. It’s not because I don’t have immense respect for them and for the risks they…

Journalist Dawit Isaac has spent 3,127 days in government custody in his native Eritrea, according to the ticker on FreeDawit, a Web site based in Sweden, Isaac’s adopted country, where he is a citizen. He has never been publicly charged with a crime or been given a trial. A thorny issue between Sweden and the…

In the reclusive Red Sea nation of Eritrea, the fate of 10 journalists who disappeared in secret prisons following a September 2001 government crackdown has been a virtual state secret—only occasionally pierced by shreds of often unverifiable, secondhand information smuggled out of the country by defectors or others fleeing into exile.

Somali journalists Hassan Ali Gesey and Abdihakim Jimale are roommates these days, living in a tiny, graffiti-ridden room in Nairobi, Kenya. Neither would have wanted to eke out an existence like this, but dire circumstances brought them together—starting with the night three years ago that Gesey saved Jimale’s life.

On March 24, I received an e-mail from a close friend under the intriguing subject “What…?” On opening the e-mail, I discovered my friend was not impressed by two articles in that morning’s newspapers condemning the government’s recent proposal to amend the press law and introduce new restrictions on the publication of newspapers.

Didace Namujimbo, a journalist for Radio Okapi, was shot dead on the night of November 21, 2008. Now, after repeated delays, a military court in Bukavu, capital of the province of South Kivu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, is putting on trial a dozen people charged in connection with the murder.

KAMPALA, Uganda As Ahmed Omar Hashi strode toward me, his figure silhouetted in the bright morning light, it was hard to believe this was the same man who left Mogadishu on a stretcher just six months earlier after suffering a near-fatal gunshot wound. As I reached to shake his hand, he pulled me into a…

For more than two years, U.S. Sen. Richard J. Durbin and a group of Senate colleagues have been pressing for the release of Gambian journalist “Chief” Ebrima Manneh, left. In July 2006, security agents arrested Manneh at his workplace at the Daily Observer and have since held him incommunicado and without charge. On Thursday, Durbin…

It seemed like déjà vu. Another major protest erupts in Uganda and journalists face the wrath of authorities and the public alike. Tensions between the government and the traditional kingdom of the Baganda, the largest ethnic group based in central Uganda, flared again Tuesday evening after a fire of unknown origin ravaged the tombs of…