Africa

Charles Atangana, a Cameroonian journalist who has been living in the UK since 2004, is facing deportation after losing his case for asylum. He believes he will be killed if he returns to Cameroon. UK's National Union of Journalists is trying to stop Glasgow-based Atangana from being deported to Cameroon where he is likely to face detention, torture or worse. The union has temporarily stopped the...

The Federation of African Journalists (FAJ) has expressed concern at the growing tendency towards enactment and enforcement of more repressive, complicated legal sanctions against journalists. In Senegal, Cameroon, Tunisia and Burundi, journalists and their leaders face constant harassment and threats to their safety as part of a brazen campaign to curb the right to freedom of expression in Africa...

Authorities arrested a journalist on Tuesday on criminal defamation charges in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hours earlier, in an unrelated incident, armed men briefly forced the city’s three main opposition broadcasters off the air, according to local journalists and news reports. Pascal Mulunda, editor of weekly Le Monitor, has been held in Kinshasa's Penitentiary and...

A member of Swaziland’s royal family has made death threats and outrageous claims against local journalists over their critical coverage of the country's leadership. During a July 21 public forum called the Smart Partnership National Dialogue in the central commercial city of Manzini, Prince Mahlaba, brother of Swaziland’s absolute ruler King Mswati III, was quoted by local media as saying: “I...

An Abidjan criminal court has acquitted the editor, managing editor and publisher of the Nouveau Courrier d’Abidjan newspaper, who had been originally been charged with theft of an official document, publishing information about a judicial case that has not yet been tried and revealing a confidential document. The three journalists, editor Saint Claver Oula, publisher Stéphane Guédé and managing...

The House of Representatives of Liberia has passed into law the Liberia Freedom of Information Law, according to the Monrovia-based Centre for Media Studies and Peace Building (CMSPB). The House, during its regular plenary session held on July 22, unanimously voted to pass the FOI law which has been in the Legislative room for over two years. The passage of the law by members of the House of...

South Africa’s The New Age newspaper, a daily that plans to start production in September, said the Times of India Group has taken a stake in the business and it will have an initial print-run of 170,000 copies, Bloomberg News has reported. The details: [ Link] The Gupta Group, the family which controls Sahara Computers Ltd., control the newspaper, which will compete with at least five large daily...

Colleagues of a Guinean radio journalist who was attacked by unknown assailants on July 16 are suspecting the military of being behind the attack. Etienne Mansaré, a military reporter of privately-owned Conakry-based Sabari FM, was stabbed in the back while on his way home after signing off from his political programme "Sous le Cocotier." "Mansaré must have been a victim of an action carried out...

Ato Kwamena Dadzie, news editor of Joy FM, an Accra-based independent radio station, was charged with a criminal offence for refusing to reveal the station's sources of information for a July 5 news item, according to the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA). The station had carried a report to the effect that an umbrella body of local contractors, the Ghana Real Estates Developers Association...

Nigerian gunmen who abducted four journalists in the country's oil-rich south a week ago released the group Sunday from an ordeal that one of them described later as "traumatic". The captors dumped the four unhurt in a forest in a remote area of Abia State, a government official said, as police and a journalists' union said no ransom was paid. "They dragged us about in the bush and blindfolded us...