It was September 18, 2001. As usual, I had to do my shift as a news reader on Eritrea’s national government-controlled radio station Dimtsi Hafash. It was just minutes before 6:30 a.m. I was almost ready with all of the Tigrinya news material given to me for broadcasting and was waiting for the on-air sign…
Eritrea was on the hot seat Thursday in Strasbourg and Brussels. Ten years after a massive crackdown on dissent in Asmara that included the arrests of 11 independent journalists, European institutions have signalled that they are weary of President Isaias Afeworki’s repression.
Namibia’s information minister recently announced that a decade-long state advertising boycott of The Namibian, the country’s largest daily newspaper, would finally end. An action intended to punish the paper for its independence had failed. It was back in December 2000 that former President Sam Nujoma told his cabinet to block all government advertising and purchases…
The former guerrillas of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) fought a 22-year civil war for greater autonomy and civil rights for the southern Sudanese people, culminating in South Sudan’s independence this July. But local journalists fear the former rebels turned government officials still harbor a war mentality that is unaccustomed to criticism, and that…
The Insider is a political newsletter about Zimbabwe, edited by veteran journalist Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was printed as a 12-page leaflet until 2003, when Zimbabwe’s hyper-inflation made it impossible to publish with annual subscriptions. Rukuni made the move to the Web, where he continued to archive and publish stories at insiderzim.com. Rukuni’s…
Somalia was among the world’s deadliest countries for journalists in 2009, the year I began working with CPJ’s Journalist Assistance program. On June 7, two gunmen shot Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe and Ahmed Omar Hashi, the director and news editor of the country’s leading independent station, Radio Shabelle. Hirabe died at the scene. Hashi barely survived…
It’s possible that no journalist in the world has received more court summonses in recent weeks than Editor Bob Rugurika of Burundi’s Radio Publique Africaine (RPA), a station founded by CPJ award-winner Alexis Sinduhije.On Tuesday, for the fifth time since July 18, Rugurika was interrogated by a magistrate in the capital, Bujumbura, about programs aired…
Dozens of Togolese journalists marched in the capital, Lomé, on Saturday to call attention to reported allegations that government security agents planned to retaliate against critical reporters. The allegations themselves are in dispute–the government called them “fabricated”–but they are set against a recent U.N. report expressing concern over the official use of arbitrary detention and…
Sometimes when a paper produces a defamatory piece, an apology will be published on page two in the next edition along with the day’s news. In Rwanda, it would appear, a paper will use an entire edition to apologize–if the insults were directed at the president. The latest issue of Ishema, at left, is perhaps a…