Equatorial Guinea

The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by reports of grave anti-press violations in Equatorial Guinea ahead of an investment symposium planned for early February. Armed security agents arrested Javier Blas, Africa editor for the Financial Times, and Peter Chapman, a senior writer for the paper, on January 20 in the capital Malabo, Blas told CPJ. The journalists were in a taxi headed to...

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the detention of a German television crew and the destruction of their footage by authorities in Equatorial Guinea. On Saturday, plainclothes state security agents led by Teobaldo Nchaso Matomba, the director of the state-controlled broadcaster TVGE, arrested reporter Jorg Brase, cameraman Michael Berger...

There has been a wave of government censorship in the past few days at Radio-Télévision Nationale de Guinée Équatoriale (RTVGE), a state-owned broadcaster that is kept under very close surveillance by information minister Jeronimo Osa Osa. On Thursday, the state radio’s French-language broadcasts were “temporarily suspended on the orders of a higher authority,” the head of the station, José Esono...

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation should cancel the Obiang prize at its next session in October 2010, 96 press freedom and human rights groups have said in a letter to UNESCO Executive Board members. At its last meeting, on June 15, UNESCO agreed to delay the prize to allow for further consultation, following a public outcry from a diverse group of scientists...