Africa

Two South African technicians were back in a Harare court on Wednesday to face charges of contravening Zimbabwe's media laws, the South African Press Associaiton (SAPA) has reported. Abdulla Gaibee and Sipho Maseko were granted bail of 200-million Zim dollars on Monday but were only released from police custody on Tuesday as they were unable to immediately pay the amount, said Ebrahim Gaibee...

A New York Times correspondent and a British freelancer who were arrested and accused of reporting illegally in Zimbabwe have been freed on bail, but their passports are being held and they are unable to leave the country, the Associated Press (AP) has reported quoting a lawyer. Barry Bearak, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Times, suffered a back injury during a fall in his cell, said...

The Zimbabwean police has arrested two unaccredited foreign journalists at a hotel in the capital Harare. The police issued a statement Thursday saying that the reporters had been covering the country's election without any accreditation. Pulitzer Prize-winner Barry Bearak, a New York Times correspondent based in Johannesburg was arrested Thursday evening. The identity of the other journalist has...

Police in the Senegalese capital of Dakar assaulted a reporter who was covering a violent anti-government protest on Sunday. They later raided the reporter’s station and confiscated footage, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local journalists and news reports. Walf TV reporter Ousmane Mangane told New York-based CPJ that riot police used Tasers on him as he was...

On the second anniversary of a police raid on the privately-owned weekly the Independent, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has called on the government to lift the illegal and unofficial ban that has prevented the newspaper from publishing for the past two years. “By suppressing a newspaper that was often very critical, the government broke the laws that it requires Gambians to respect under pain...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) provided financial support for the publication Friday in N’Djamena of a “newspaper of newspapers,” a single issue combining most of the independent Chadian weeklies that have not appeared since a state of emergency was proclaimed on February 15. It calls for the repeal of a press law imposed by decree on February 20. “The independent N’Djamena-based press is showing...

The Zimbabwe government has done what it was expected to do ahead of the March 29 general elections—it is clamping down on the media. To start with it has refused to allow several leading international news organisaitons to cover the elections although it has signed international conventions that require it to guarantee “total access to national and international media.” A jail sentence of up to...

The Rwandan government has launched an intensive hunt for the founder and editor of the private bi-monthly newspaper Umuco “for insulting the president”. The newspaper has already been suspended for a year and Managing Editor Bonaventure Bizumuremyi is now in hiding after he compared President Paul Kagame to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Local journalists said six police cars surrounded Bizumuremyi’s...

In January this year, the Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of International PEN released a comprehensive report on how criminal defamation legislation is being used in Africa to silence print journalists who report on corruption, mismanagement, and other abuses of power. It looked at cases of defamation-related persecution in the 17 months to November 2007. Now, three months into 2008, new

The Chadian government effectively forced the country’s only permanent foreign correspondent to leave the country on Thursday after withdrawing her work permit without explanation, the Committee to Protect Journaliusts (CPJ) has reported quoting local journalists. Sonia Rolley, a journalist reporting for several France-based media outlets, including Radio France Internationale (RFI), Agence France...