When the sun set in Nigeria: Dele Giwa’s awful murder
Twenty-three years ago, on October 19, 1986, the sun quite suddenly set at noon. In the brutal darkness, we lost Dele Giwa, just two short years after he and I, along with two other professional journalists, launched Nigeria’s first newsmagazine, Newswatch.
A memorial to killed journalists, a call to action
We’ve launched a new section of our Web site, and we hope you take a few minutes to read some of its pages. There is one, for example, on Russian reporter Natalya Estemirova, who dared to examine human rights crimes in Chechnya. Another is devoted to Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco, a Tijuana newspaper editor who…
Q&A: Wife enters journalism after husband’s murder
The killers of Nigerian Editor Bayo Ohu are still a mystery, three weeks after his murder. Now the family of the former Guardian newspaper journalist lives in fear. Ohu was shot dead early on Sunday morning, September 20, by a gang of five armed men and a woman in his apartment in Egbeda, a Lagos…
Journalist killed on a Sunday morning at home in Nigeria
More than two weeks have passed since the cold-blooded killing of Bayo Ohu, assistant news editor and political reporter for the Lagos, Nigeria-based The Guardian. The 45-year-old, soft-spoken workaholic opened the door to his home early on Sunday, September 20, as he prepared for church. According to eyewitnesses and local reports, five gunmen and one female ringleader shot Ohu…
Mexican journalist killed inside newsroom in Chihuahua
New York, September 25, 2009—Mexico must put an end to the pattern of impunity in journalists’ murders by prosecuting all those responsible for Wednesday’s brutal killing of Norberto Miranda Madrid, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Miranda, a harsh critic of local crime, was shot to death in his office in Nuevo Casas Grandes…
Veteran TV reporter shot dead in central Colombia
New York, September 24, 2009—Veteran television journalist Diego de Jesús Rojas Velásquez was gunned down Tuesday outside the central Colombian city of Supía, according to interviews and press reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Colombian authorities to thoroughly investigate the killing.
CPJ urges PM’s intervention in Kenyan murder case
Dear Prime Minister: We are writing to express our concern over the lack of progress in the case of murdered Kenyan journalist Francis Nyaruri. The journalist was found decapitated, with evidence of torture to his body, on January 29 in Kodera Forest near his hometown of Nyamira.
Russia, EU tell CPJ they will act on Russian murders
On September 15, a CPJ delegation released a special report in Moscow on impunity in journalist killings committed in Russia under the country’s current leadership. The report, Anatomy of Injustice, garnered an unusual amount of attention from the Russian media. Our press conference at the Independent Press Center was packed with journalists, both domestic and…
September 18, 2001, in Eritrea: A memory that never fades
It feels like it happened just yesterday. It was 7 a.m. on an average day in September in Asmara, Eritrea. My brain was still reshuffling the information I had gathered about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center a week earlier. I was writing an article on it for the next issue of Setit,…