Africa

New York, August 16, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists is troubled that Angolan immigration authorities barred Joana Macie and Manuel Cossa, two Mozambican journalists, from entering the country on Thursday, claiming they lacked the proper entry visas.

New York, August 12, 2011--Gambian state security agency forced radio station Taranga FM to drop its popular news and current affairs programs for the second time this year, local journalists said. The National Intelligence Agency (NIA) threatened to close the community station southwest of the capital, Banjul, if the broadcaster did not drop its daily news programs in Wolof and Mandinka.

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 by his station, according to news reports and CPJ research. The magistrate allegedly asked Rugurika to "correct" a broadcast that pointed out that a 1996 U.N. report had implicated an official involved in the setting up of Burundi's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in a massacre, RPA Editor-in-Chief Eric Manirakiza told CPJ.

New York, August 9, 2011--Prison officials in western Kenya attacked three journalists working for the private broadcaster Nation Television (NTV) as they were covering an escape attempt by six inmates on Sunday, local journalists told CPJ.

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 the alleged use of torture.

New York, August 5, 2011--Angolan authorities should explain Tuesday's arrest and incommunicado detention of a radio journalist for reporting on a nationwide wave of mass fainting of people, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. 

New York, August 5, 2011--The logistics manager and driver for Radio Simba, Farah Hassan Sahal, died from bullet wounds early Thursday evening just outside the station's compound in the restive Bakara Market in the capital, Mogadishu, Radio Simba Director Abdullahi Ali Farah told CPJ. Hassan was helping the station move damaged radio equipment when a sniper shot him three times, Farah said. Hassan, 45, is survived by his wife and eight children, he said.

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 sign of the times for Rwanda's press.

The vernacular bimonthly had recently published an opinion piece written under the byline "Kamikaze" that claimed President Kagame was a sociopath. Many within the media community protested, as did Adrien Servumba, who, branding himself "a concerned citizen," called on the state-run media ombudsman to reprimand the managing director, Fidele Gakire, the state news agency reported. On July 25, the agency reported that men in plainclothes seized copies of the paper from vendors. The same day, members of the Forum of Private Newspapers, an organization of newspaper owners, suspended Gakire from the group for six months. 

New York, August 4, 2011--The government of Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara, who pledged to uphold democracy in a Friday meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, has suspended a newspaper over a reprinted opinion column criticizing the White House meeting, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, August 3, 2011--The government of Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza is attempting to silence critical press coverage of his administration with incessant judicial harassment of two of the country's leading independent broadcasters, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.