In African hot spots, journalists forced into exile
By Tom Rhodes High numbers of local journalists have fled several African countries in recent years after being assaulted, threatened, or imprisoned, leaving a deep void in professional reporting. The starkest examples are in the Horn of Africa nations of Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, where dozens of journalists have been forced into exile. Zimbabwe, Rwanda,…
Attacks on the Press 2009: Zimbabwe
Top Developments• Government fails to implement reforms allowing private media to operate.• Two international broadcasters allowed to resume operation. Key Statistic $32,000: Application and accreditation fees imposed on international journalists. In a measure of the deplorable state of press freedom in Zimbabwe, a year marked by harassment and obstruction was considered a small step forward. “Journalists…
Journalist flees Zimbabwe after death threat
New York, January 20, 2010—Freelance journalist Stanley Kwenda, left, a contributor to the private weekly The Zimbabwean, fled the country on Friday after he said he received a telephone threat from a high-ranking police officer, according to the paper’s editor, Wilf Mbanga.
Free Maziar Bahari: 100 global journalists petition Iran
Your Excellency: We are writing to express our grave concern at the detention of our esteemed fellow journalist Maziar Bahari and to request his immediate release. Mr. Bahari has been detained since June 21. No charges have been brought against him, and he has not been granted access to a lawyer. As one of the most impartial and committed journalists in his field, he has reported regularly over the past decade from the Middle East, principally from Iran and Iraq, and provided consistently balanced and insightful reports. As an award-winning documentary filmmaker, he has earned global respect for his work.
Attacks on the Press in 2008: Zimbabwe
President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party, startled by balloting that threatened their 28-year rule, unleashed a brutal crackdown on opposition supporters and the press. Veteran journalist Geoff Hill described the weeks between the first round of voting in March and a runoff in June as “the worst time for journalists in Zimbabwe’s history,” a…
How diamond rings silence Zimbabwe’s foreign press
The Hong Kong police announced on Monday they would investigate the alleged assault on photographer Richard Jones by Zimbabwe’s first lady, Grace Mugabe, while she was on vacation. On January 15, Jones claimed Mugabe ordered her bodyguard to hold the photographer down while she punched him repeatedly in the face near Hong Kong’s exclusive Shangri-la…
Newspaper’s distributors beaten in Zimbabwe, papers burned
New York, May 27, 2008–CPJ condemns the beating of distributors for private weekly The Zimbabwean on Sunday last week. Unknown assailants hijacked and burned down the distributors’ truck, which was carrying 60,000 copies of the paper. “Attacking these media workers and burning newspapers is nothing but brutal censorship of one of the country’s last remaining…
Attacks on the Press 2007: Zimbabwe
It’s the vacuum that illustrates the problem–all of the reporters who have fled, the news outlets that have closed, the stories that have gone unreported. Seven years of government intimidation and deteriorating economic conditions have prompted a steady flow of Zimbabwean journalists to leave the country. CPJ has documented at least 48 journalists as having…