Africa

Africa’s leading press freedom advocates met in Kenya this week to support the Declaration of Table Mountain, a freedom of expression campaign organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) to repeal criminal defamation and insult laws across the continent. The inaugural meeting of the campaign’s steering committee, held in Nairobi on September 1 and 2 , brought...

A Somali journalist working for a private radio station was stabbed to death by unidentified attackers in the war-torn country's central Galkayo region, colleagues and witnesses said Wednesday. Abdulahi Omar Gedi, who worked with Daljir Radio, was attacked when he left work late on Tuesday and later died of his injuries in hospital, his colleague Abdulkadir Mohamed told Agence France-Presse (AFP)...

Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika last week threatened to shut down newspapers that “tarnish” his government’s image. The president, who was speaking at an agriculture show in the capital city of Liongwe, seemed to be referring to a story in the privately-owned Malawi News Daily, reports said. The story quoted a report from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), an economic...

Uganda's Constitutional Court has declared the country's criminal sedition offence, which has been used to prosecute journalists, unconstitutional. The ruling was based on a 2005 constitutional review petition filed by the East African Media Institute and CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner Andrew Mwenda over political radio commentary critical of the government. Mwenda told New York...

A criminal court judge in Togo Wednesday last imposed an indefinite ban on the distribution of a Benin newspaper that had raised questions about the alleged involvement of a half-brother of President Faure Gnassingbé in drug trafficking. The ban on Tribune d'Afrique, a private bimonthly based in Benin that has a bureau in the Togolese capital of Lomé, was based on charges of publishing false news...

A six-month jail sentence has been imposed by a Dakar court on Abdourahmane Diallo, the editor of the Express News daily, for defaming President Abdoulaye Wade's chief of staff, Pape Samba Mboup. A warrant has been issued for the arrest of Diallo, who was tried in absentia, but he has not yet been detained. The Dakar criminal court that had tried Diallo in absentia finally issued its verdict on...

Veteran radio journalist Barkhat Awale was killed by crossfire Tuesday in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, the Commitee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local journalists and news reports. He is the second journalist killed on duty in Somalia this year, according to CPJ. Awale, 60, director of the community radio station Hurma Radio, was on the roof of the station assisting a...

Chad's national assembly has passed a media bill that the government resubmitted at the start of the month. Adopted on Thursday by 82 votes for, 2 against and 11 abstentions, the new law suppresses its predecessor's provisions for prison sentences for insults and defamation and the crime of insulting the president, but it introduces sentences of 6 to 12 months in prison, fines of 100,000 to 1...

A Zimbabwean minister who threatened to jail journalists who used information he said had been leaked from cabinet meetings, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Information Minister Webster Shamu made the threat on August 4. Shamu said that journalists and ministers could face jail sentences of up to 20 years under the 1970 Official Secrets Act...

The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) has condemned the suspension from work of Nuh Muse Birjeb, a journalist working with the Voice of America (VOA) Somali Service, also the correspondent for Universal TV in the Puntland regions. "The suspension of a journalist who is merely carrying out his media work is a breach of press freedom. We understand that this is the height of a series of...