On September 29, Christof Maletsky, CEO of state-owned New Era Publication Corporation, which publishes the daily newspaper, suspended Beukes until October 31 over an editorial critical of the judiciary, three journalists who saw the suspension letter told CPJ, on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisals.
In the suspension letter, Maletsky raised issues regarding non-compliance with New Era’s mandate and the overall professional conduct of the newspaper, according to the journalists. Maletsky barred Beukes from making public statements about his suspension and from entering New Era’s offices in Windhoek, the capital, those sources said.
“Johnathan Beukes’ suspension raises serious questions about the editorial independence of New Era, a taxpayer-funded publication,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator, Angela Quintal, in New York. “Beukes must be allowed to resume work immediately, and New Era’s management should allow the publication’s editors and journalists to exercise their editorial judgment and to keep the public informed without interference or censorship.”
On October 2, the newspaper published a front-page apology to the judiciary, saying it had “published stories and an editorial that fell way below the standards that we had set ourselves.” It referred to an editorial that “painted a picture of a non-transparent commission with regards to the selection of a judge for the Fishrot corruption trial.” The Fishrot case involves an international scandal over alleged corruption in the country’s fishing quota system that has ensnared former government ministers.
On September 29, New Era published an editorial, which CPJ reviewed, alleging the judiciary lacked transparency in its public communications over the appointment of judges and questioning why it never responded to demands for transparency in its decisions.
John Nakuta, Namibia’s Media Ombudsman, whose office is mandated with hearing complaints against the media, said that he would review the content of the editorial but not the suspension decision, following a referral from the local press freedom organization Editors’ Forum of Namibia, The Namibian newspaper reported.
On October 9, the Namibian Media Professionals Union led a peaceful protest at the New Era offices, calling for Beukes’ suspension to be lifted.
Maletsky told CPJ via messaging app that the matter was an internal process that should be allowed to run its course.
]]>The pair were investigating the alleged illegal sale of pregnant wild elephants, which were purchased during a controversial government auction, to unknown groups in Dubai, according to the same sources. As part of their investigation, the journalists used a drone to fly without permission over the privately owned farm, where the elephants were being kept.
On their way back to Windhoek, the journalists were stopped by wildlife rangers who mounted a roadblock in the town of Gobabis, about 55 miles (88 kilometers) west of GoHunt Namibia Safaris’ farm, said Grobler.
The farm’s owner, Gerrie Odendaal, told CPJ via messaging app that the rangers stopped the journalists after he lodged a trespassing complaint with the police and wildlife authorities, saying the journalists violated his privacy when they flew the drone over his property and recorded footage without permission.
“Imagine someone doing that and taking pictures while you are in a swimming pool having fun! That is when I decided to alert the police and the wardens in the area and that is how a roadblock was mounted for them,” Odendaal said, who added that the Namibian government permits the international exportation of auctioned elephants.
The United Kingdom, among other countries, has condemned the export of wild African elephants bought through government auctions, alleging that it violates the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, a treaty that limits where and how wild elephants are exported from countries such as Namibia, according to a National Geographic report. Transportation of pregnant elephants is also illegal under section 2(1) of the convention’s transport guideline for endangered species.
Police arrived at the roadblock and took the journalists to the Gobabis police station, where they were detained for about four hours, said Grobler, who added that police disabled his vehicle’s car security system, searched it without his consent, and later seized Soni’s drone and its memory card “for the investigation.”
The journalists were released the same day after police recorded their statements and warned them that they were being investigated for alleged trespassing, according to Grobler and Soni.
In addition to using a drone to fly over Odendaal’s farm and recording visuals and photos of elephants, the journalists are also accused of using the drone to “willfully disturb the specially protected game without a permit or written authority issued by the Minister of Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism,” according to a police statement reviewed by CPJ.
If convicted of trespassing, the journalists could face a fine of 1,000 Namibian dollars (US$67), imprisonment for a year, or both, according to Section 2 of the Trespass Ordinance 3 of 1962.
As of March 28, 2022, Grobler and Soni were still under police investigation and Soni’s drone and memory card had not been returned, Grobler said.
When reached via messaging app, police spokeswoman chief inspector Kauna Shikwambi refused to comment on the investigation, saying the matter would soon be before court. A court date has not been set yet, according to Grobler.
Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism spokesperson Romeo Muyunda did not respond to CPJ queries sent via messaging app.
On January 8, 2010, Grobler was assaulted in retaliation for his work by four men in a bar who cut his face with a broken piece of glass and kicked him repeatedly in the head, as CPJ documented at the time.
[Editors’ Note: The first and third paragraphs have been updated to correct a typo in the name of the farm.]
]]>Seljan said that the neighbor recognized the alleged lurker as Jón Óttar Ólafsson, a former police officer turned private detective. Ólafsson had occasionally appeared in social media videos by Icelandic fishing giant Samherji to defend the brand against claims of corruption in Seljan’s investigative reporting.
In November 2019 RÚV reported in partnership with Icelandic news website Stundin and Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera that the company had allegedly bribed officials in Namibia with payments equating millions of dollars in exchange for the right to fish.
In the past, Ólafsson had texted Seljan criticizing his reporting on the Namibia case. “Your lack of judgment is incredible!” read one text message, Seljan told CPJ via video call.
Fielding criticism via text was one thing but having the man behind the criticism show up at his home was a “game changing moment,” Seljan told CPJ. “I have never thought that Samherji will go as far in its campaign and harass me and my family personally.”
By then, for more than a year, Samherji had waged a campaign to discredit Seljan and his colleagues at RÚV’s investigative TV show, “Kveikur.” In statements on its website, the company accused journalists of “unethical practices,” “distortion of facts,” and of acting out of a desire for “personal revenge.” In videos published on its YouTube page it claimed “dishonesty” on the part of the journalists, and accused Seljan of tampering with a key document used in his reports. The company also filed a barrage of ethics complaints with the broadcaster over the journalists’ posts on social media and even tried to manipulate a journalist union election to prevent an RÚV reporter from taking the helm.
The company’s actions are “extremely serious,” said RÚV news director Rakel Thorbergsdóttir in an email to CPJ, and “can in no way be justified or explained by Samherji as some kind of response to journalistic work.”
In emails to CPJ, Samherji deputy CEO Margrét Ólafsdóttir denied that the company had harassed the journalists, characterizing Samherji’s statements and social media posts as “freedom of speech.” She said that Ólafsson “worked from time to time on concrete projects” for the company but “these projects have never involved harassment or bullying of Helgi Seljan.” Reached by CPJ via phone, Ólafsson said that he had never showed up at Seljan’s private home; he apologized for some of his text messages to the journalist, Ólafsson told CPJ in a follow up email. (His apology was also published by Icelandic news site Kjarninn.)
According to RÚV director general Stefán Eiríksson, who spoke with CPJ via email, Samherji never asked for a correction to “Kveikur’s” reporting in the Namibia case. Asked about this, Ólafsdóttir did not directly reply to CPJ’s question but only said that “we have lost all faith in RÚV’s dedication to portray a balanced image of Samherji.”
Icelandic press freedom advocates told CPJ that they are concerned that Samherji’s campaign will chill journalistic investigations in a country that has historically had a high level of media freedom but where companies are increasingly using their economic power to influence the press and politics.
“Will journalists hesitate to report on big, powerful corporations out of fear that they might be harassed for months, publicly attacked, even stalked?” asked Arnhildur Hálfdánardóttir, chair of the Union of Reporters, an independent trade organization representing most of RÚV’s staff, in an email to CPJ. “We fear the implications for public discourse, critical journalism and democracy.”
The investigation’s impact
RÚV’s reporting rankled the company — and made waves in Iceland and beyond. In a lengthy post on Samherji’s website last month, the company said it “firmly rejects the allegations of bribery but accepts the criticism that in the circumstances, it was necessary to pay more attention to how payments were made, who they were made to and on what basis, who had the authority to give instructions about them and where they should be received.”
In the same post, Samherji CEO Thorsteinn Már Baldvinsson was quoted as saying he was “very sorry” for what happened, though said that “no criminal offences” were committed save for on the part of an unnamed former managing director of the company’s Namibia operations who was terminated in 2016. (Jóhannes Stefansson, the former head of Samherji’s Namibia operations, left the company in 2016. A whistleblower who has provided information to journalists, he claims that Baldvinsson authorized him to make the alleged bribes, according to seafood news site IntraFish.)
Baldvinsson left the company over the bribery allegations in 2019, but he returned as co-director in March 2020 and resumed as CEO of Samherji in February 2021, according to news magazine the Iceland Review.
Meanwhile, in Iceland an investigation into the company’s actions is ongoing, Iceland’s district prosecutor wrote in an email to CPJ. Asked about this, Ólafsdóttir, Samherji´s deputy CEO, said that “almost two years after this all exploded in the media, no arrests have been made. No Samherji employee is charged, indicted, or convicted.”
In Namibia, two ministers resigned immediately after the news broke in November 2019; they have been charged with corruption and are awaiting trial, according to news reports.
According to daily newspaper The Namibian, the justice ministry is seeking to extradite three former Samherji employees from Iceland to face charges in Namibia, where an investigation is ongoing. CPJ emailed the Namibian Ministry of Justice but did not receive a reply.
A campaign of criticism and complaints
Journalists at RÚV told CPJ that the company’s attempts to clear its name through singling out the journalists who reported on it has taken a toll.
“I have young kids who like to watch YouTube and there were weeks when Samherji was so heavily sponsoring these videos on YouTube that my kids were constantly confronted with videos of me and Helgi [Seljan] depicted as liars and bad people” Aðalsteinn Kjartansson, a former investigative journalist with RÚV, told CPJ in a video call. “I have been completely drained because of these attacks, which greatly affected my personal life and my family.”
Kjartansson told CPJ he left the broadcaster partly due to Samherji’s actions. At his new employer, Stundin, he brought a journalistic eye to the harassment, publishing leaked memos from Samherji that detailed the company’s creation of a “guerilla division” with a sole focus to discredit the reporters. (Another Icelandic news website, Kjarninn published a similar report.)
Both Stundin and Kjarninn revealed that a lawyer for Samherji wrote to a colleague of her plan of “stabbing, twisting, and sprinkling salt on the wound” of the whistleblower who helped the journalists expose the alleged bribes.
In response to the revelations, Samherji conceded in a statement that it “reacted harshly to negative coverage” and “that those reactions went too far,” though maintained that the broadcaster’s reporting was “one-sided, unfair, and not always based on facts.”
Seljan and his colleagues told CPJ via video calls that Samherji’s tactics also included ethics complaints aimed at getting the broadcaster to censure Seljan and other journalists.
In August 2020, RÚV issued a statement defending Seljan against Samherji’s accusations that he tampered with documents in his reporting on the company. When Seljan posted the statement on social media with his own commentary, Samherji filed several complaints with the broadcaster’s ethics committee accusing the journalist of violating RÚV’s code of conduct which prohibits reporters from sharing opinions on controversial matters.
According to the ethics committee’s decision, which CPJ reviewed, it found that Seljan did violate the broadcaster’s code of conduct in five social media posts. Seljan told CPJ that the ethics committee later reversed its decision on one of the five posts because the comment was unrelated to Samherji.
Although the ethics committee’s decision wasn’t a judgement on Seljan’s investigation into Samherji, the company presented the decision as a referendum on RÚV’s reporting. In a statement published on its website it said that Seljan was “found guilty of a serious ethical violation for writing about Samherji.” It also asked RÚV’s board to reprimand Seljan and deem him unfit to report on the company’s affairs, but the board did not take any action against Seljan, according to an email by RÚV’s news director Thorbergsdóttir and her statement published on RÚV’s website.
Samherji similarly filed 40 other ethics complaints against 10 additional RÚV journalists who posted the RÚV statement, but the ethics committee found no wrongdoing in those cases, according to CPJ’s review of the committee’s decision.
Samherji also took its campaign to the Union of Icelandic Journalists, an independent trade group, according to Stundin and Kjarninn’s reporting based on the leaked Samherji memos. The outlets revealed that the company’s “guerilla division” attempted to interfere with the voting process for a new chairperson of the union by to trying to mobilize votes against Sigríður Dögg Auðunsdóttir, a reporter for RÚV.
Auðunsdóttir, who did not work on the Namibia investigation, was elected despite Samherji’s efforts; she told CPJ via email that Samherji’s goal was “to prevent that a reporter from RÚV would take over as the Union’s chairperson, as Samherji seemed to fear that it would mean that the Union would take a stronger stand against the company’s tactics.”
Ólafsdóttir, Samherji´s deputy CEO, denied that Samherji tried to interfere in the voting process, saying that the allegations stem from private correspondence leaked to the media by individuals who have no decision-making authority in Samherji.
Valgerður Anna Jóhannsdóttir, head of the journalism program at the University of Iceland, believes that Samherji’s campaign will send a signal to other corporations on how to respond to unfavorable coverage. “It serves as an example to other corporations how to scare off journalists,” she told CPJ via phone. This type of campaign has an effect: journalists consciously and unconsciously will censor themselves,” she said.
As RÚV’s journalists defend themselves, they have found solidarity across the globe, according to The Namibian. The Namibia Media Professionals Union called Samherji’s campaign an attempt to silence claims about the company’s alleged corruption and said that its journalists are standing with their “intimidated” and “harassed” colleagues in Iceland.
]]>Dr. Stergomena Tax
SADC Executive Secretary
SADC House
Plot No. 54385
Central Business District
Private Bag 0095
Gaborone, Botswana
Sent via email and facsimile
Dear Dr. Tax,
I write to you from the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent non-profit organization that advocates for press freedom worldwide, ahead of the 39th Ordinary Summit to urge you to prioritize press freedom and the safety of journalists within the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
The SADC treaty commits member states to the principles of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. In addition, the SADC Protocol on Culture, Information and Sport provides that member states should “take necessary measures to ensure the development of media that are editorially independent.” Despite these commitments, CPJ has documented a deeply troubling erosion of press freedom in several member states, including attacks on individual journalists, media suspensions, internet shutdowns, and restrictive legislation.
Many of these threats intensify ahead of and during elections. More than half of the SADC member states are expected to hold local and national elections by the end of 2020. SADC’s principles and guidelines for democratic elections require governments to “foster transparency, freedom of the media” and “access to information by all citizens.” Therefore, member states must ensure a free press so that journalists can work freely and safely, and citizens can access reliable information and make informed decisions.
Here is a summary of our priority issues within the region:
Attacks on journalists
We are particularly concerned with Tanzania, whose president, John Magufuli, is the incoming chair of the SADC, and where journalists operate in a very hostile environment. Freelance journalist Azory Gwanda has been missing since 2017, and the government’s failure to provide accountability in his case has had a chilling effect on the local media. Just last month, Erick Kabendera was arrested and charged with economic crimes in retaliation for his critical journalism. He remains behind bars.
However, attacks on journalists in the region extend beyond Tanzania:
Media suspensions and shutdowns
In Tanzania and Zambia, authorities have used media suspensions to pull critical media outlets from the newsstands and the airwaves. During elections in late December 2018, authorities in the DRC blocked the signals of at least two broadcasters. Partial and complete internet shutdowns in the DRC and in Zimbabwe have strangled the flow of information during politically tense periods.
Restrictive legislation
Criminal defamation, sedition, and secrecy laws—many of them vestiges of the colonial and apartheid eras—have been used to target critical journalists and media outlets in Namibia, Zambia, Botswana, and the DRC. Zimbabwe and Lesotho have recently struck down criminal defamation laws and we urge member states to follow this example. Through new regulations, Tanzania has also set impossibly high barriers for bloggers to operate while seeking greater control of what citizens can say online.
These are difficult but not intractable challenges. In fact, SADC member states have been catalysts for the development of press freedom in Africa, and around the world. Consider that May 3, the date of the 1991 Declaration of Windhoek—in which African journalists affirmed that the “free press is essential to the development and maintenance of democracy in a nation, and for economic development”—later became the day on which the global media community commemorates World Press Freedom Day.
Press freedom is essential to ensuring sustainable development, peace, and the enjoyment of human rights, and the SADC can and should be at the forefront of protecting and promoting press freedom in Africa and the world. But in order to do so, it must hold its member states to account on press freedom violations. The 39th Ordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government is a prime opportunity for SADC members to raise the issues CPJ has documented with relevant states. We urge SADC member states at the Summit to recommit to press freedom, and call for the release of all imprisoned journalists and the protection of free and independent media in the region.
CPJ would welcome an opportunity to discuss this further with the SADC secretariat, as well as representatives of member states.
Sincerely,
Robert Mahoney
Deputy Executive Director
Committee to Protect Journalists
CC:
Angola, President João Lourenço
Botswana, President Mokgweetsi Masisi
Comoros, President Azali Assoumani
Democratic Republic of the Congo, President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi
Eswatini, Prime Minister Ambrose Dlamini
Lesotho, Prime Minister Tom Thabane
Madagascar, President Andry Rajoelina
Malawi, President Peter Mutharika
Mauritius, Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth
Mozambique, President Filipe Nyusi
Namibia, President Hage Geingob
Seychelles, President Danny Faure
South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa
Tanzania, President John Magufuli
Zambia, President Edgar Lungu
Zimbabwe, President Emmerson Mnangagwa
Namibia’s information minister recently announced that a decade-long state advertising boycott of The Namibian, the country’s largest daily newspaper, would finally end. An action intended to punish the paper for its independence had failed.
It was back in December 2000 that former President Sam Nujoma told his cabinet to block all government advertising and purchases of the leading daily because he perceived the newspaper to be anti-governmental. Nujoma’s decree caused the paper to lose 6 percent of its advertising revenue and 650 single-copy sales to government officials, The Namibian‘s founding editor and former CPJ award winner Gwen Lister said.
In late August, after years of gradual pressure from several ministers, President Hifikepunye Pohamba’s government ended its boycott of the paper in a two-paragraph statement, Lister reported. The understated announcement seemed to illustrate the valuable lesson the government had learned: Citizens want a critical, independent media. After all, the boycott, intended to shutter the paper through financial pressure, only made it stronger. The Namibian currently sells an average of 40,000 copies per day–more than twice that of its main competitor, the state-run daily New Era, local reports said.
Suffocating under the propaganda of a colonial, apartheid-era South African government, Namibians had grown to cherish the few fledgling independent voices that managed to survive. “The mainly exile leadership that took over after independence [in 1990] did not realize that Namibians were independent enough not to want the same from their newly elected government,” Lister said. Political leaders with liberation credentials from places such as the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), the governing political party in Namibia, must not underestimate the public’s desire for independent, critical information.
Many governments with liberator laurels should take the case of The Namibian into account. When rebels become government officials, they are often popular initially, but they cannot expect approval from the press and public forever. African leaders who came to power through insurrection–whether in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, or Zimbabwe–have often tried to suppress dissent and deny the public the right to a free, independent press. Independent voices, then, become more prized than ever.
This perhaps explains the success of the independent Zimbabwean newspaper, a South Africa-printed publication, which has managed to survive despite intentionally high importation duties, printing costs, and registration fees–attempts by Zimbabwe’s ruling party to quash the publication. The paper is still one of the leading papers in the country.
Journalists and press advocates hope the latest rebel-turned-liberator government, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, will not follow in the footsteps of SWAPO or the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front. While independent papers like The Citizen and The Juba Post have faced harassment this year, the government has not boycotted or attempted to shut down either publication. The Juba Post receives some advertising revenue from the government, but it is far less than what other papers receive, the paper’s accountant, Sarah Paul, said.
The eight other publications that have emerged in recent years in South Sudan, however, have a short life span, local journalists said. Since the country’s referendum in January, in which southern Sudanese citizens unanimously voted for separation from North Sudan, a flurry of publications have emerged, freelance journalist Anthony Kamba said. “But most papers need support, both in finance and logistics, and end up being backed by certain government individuals with personal, political interests,” he said. “These papers are never popular–they have a short life span and usually last three to four months.”
]]>New York, January 14, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Namibian authorities to thoroughly investigate an alleged attack by four assailants against freelance journalist John Grobler on January 8. Grobler told CPJ that four men attacked him at a bar Friday evening in the capital, Windhoek, cutting his face with a broken glass and kicking him repeatedly in the head. Grobler was taken to MediCity Emergency Clinic, where he was treated and released.
Grobler was able to identify three out of four of his assailants as prominent businessmen with close ties to the ruling party, South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), he said. Desmond Amunyela, David Imbili, Kiplat Kamanya and one unidentified man accused Grobler of writing derogatorily about SWAPO and Amunyela before attacking him, according to the police report. Imbili is the son-in-law of former President Sam Nujoma. The freelance reporter has filed a complaint against the four men.
Grobler, a 1996 Alfred Friendly Fellowship recipient, wrote a September 2009 article for the independent daily, The Namibian, that implicated Amunyela in the illegal acquisition of several state-owned resort properties, he told CPJ. Local journalists said they believed the attack may be linked to Grobler’s December 2009 article printed in the South African independent weekly, Mail and Guardian that accused the ruling party of widespread vote-rigging during the November presidential and parliamentary elections.
“We condemn this vicious assault on John Grobler,” said CPJ’s Africa Program Coordinator
Imbili filed a counterclaim with the police on January 12 saying it was Grobler who had attacked the four men, according to local news reports. Police spokesman Hophni Hamufungu told CPJ they are currently investigating both claims.
Alleged political interference by the SWAPO led to the resignation on January 11 of the acting director general of the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation, Mathew Gowaseb, according to news reports. Gowaseb’s decision to resign makes him the third director general to vacate this position within the last year, the Media Institute of Southern Africa reported.
]]>Facing pressure from environmental and animal welfare groups, seal hunting in Namibia is a clandestine affair, often done in the early hours to avoid tourists and other witnesses. Prying eyes were not welcome on Thursday. Less than 20 minutes after filming began, hunters allegedly turned their clubs on the journalists. Ecostorm and the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) allege that hunters attacked Wickens and Smithers and seized their equipment.
Police were quick to make arrests … of the two journalists. A WSPA press release alleges that one hunter attacked Wickens and Smithers even as the two were being held in a police van.
A court in Swakopmund convicted the journalists today on charges of entering a protected marine area without a permit, fined them US$1,200 apiece, and imposed six-month suspended sentences, The Associated Press reported. No hunters were arrested.
So there, apparently, is the legal standard: The marine area needs protection from cameras. Journalists (not to mention seals) are not afforded protection from clubs.
]]>With the rule of law weak in many African countries, journalists regularly battle threats and harassment, not only from governments but also from rogue elements, such as militias. Repressive legislation is used in many countries to silence journalists who write about sensitive topics such as corruption, mismanagement, and human rights abuses. If fewer journalists were killed or imprisoned in Africa than in some other regions in 2004–two were killed and 19 were behind bars for their work at year’s end–the problems they face are insidious and ongoing.
In the Gambia, veteran journalist and press freedom activist Deyda Hydara was killed in a drive-by shooting in December, just days after the country adopted repressive media legislation that he had opposed. In Ivory Coast, reporter Antoine Massé was fatally shot while covering violent clashes between French peacekeeping troops and demonstrators in the western town of Duékoué in November. French and Canadian investigative reporter Guy-André Kieffer was feared dead after he disappeared from the Ivoirian commercial capital, Abidjan, in April. This followed the killings of two journalists in Ivory Coast in 2003, including the murder of Radio France Internationale (RFI) correspondent Jean Hélène by an Ivoirian police officer. As the country’s civil conflict worsened in 2004, journalists continued to be targeted.
The conviction of Hélène’s murderer in early 2004 was a welcome contrast to the pattern of impunity that has often accompanied the murders of journalists in Africa. Under pressure from France, judicial investigations were launched into Kieffer’s disappearance, but they had reached no conclusion by year’s end. In neighboring Burkina Faso, the killers of independent journalist Norbert Zongo have still not been punished, six years after his death. Zongo was killed in December 1998 while investigating the murder of a man who worked as a driver for the president’s brother. In Mozambique, six men were sentenced to lengthy jail terms in 2003 for the November 2000 murder of investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, but fears persist that the masterminds remain at large. Concerns that high-level officials were involved intensified in May, when one of the convicts escaped from prison for a second time and managed to flee to Canada.
Eritrea remained Africa’s worst jailer of journalists, with 17 held in secret prisons. Many have been detained without trial for more than three years amid allegations of torture and reports of appalling conditions. The Eritrean government has refused to disclose any information about them or to engage in any dialogue about their plight. One journalist was jailed in Cameroon and another in Sierra Leone at year’s end. Despite Sierra Leone’s professed return to democracy since the end of its civil war in 2002, the government used an abusive and outdated law to prosecute veteran newspaper editor Paul Kamara for an article criticizing President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. In October, a court sentenced Kamara to two years in prison for “seditious libel,” despite the protests of journalists and press freedom groups.
On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, CPJ included Eritrea and Zimbabwe on its annual list of the “World’s Worst Places to Be a Journalist.” Eritrea has banned the entire private press since 2001, and Zimbabwe’s regime seems bent on the same goal. President Robert Mugabe’s government has used repressive legislation to shutter the country’s only independent newspaper, The Daily News, as well as to detain and harass dozens of independent journalists. In the run-up to crucial general elections in March 2005, authorities have introduced a string of even more repressive laws, including one that could be used to jail journalists for up to 20 years for publishing or communicating “false” information deemed prejudicial to the state.
Other trouble spots include tiny, oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, where independent journalism is not tolerated; Rwanda, where serious threats and intimidation continue against government critics, including journalists; and the autonomous Tanzanian island of Zanzibar, where a government ban has kept the only independent newspaper there shuttered for more than a year. In Ethiopia, the government continues to use criminal laws to intimidate independent journalists. It has divided and weakened the only independent journalists organization, EFJA, after the group protested a proposed press law.
While globalization and technology are opening rural areas and improving cross-border information flows, repressive countries such as Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea, and Eritrea have been closing themselves, expelling foreign journalists, banning international human rights groups, and trying to control Internet access. In October, the Eritrean government announced it would move Internet cafés to “educational and research centers.” Authorities said the aim was to protect minors from pornography, but CPJ sources feared that the government was attempting to block access to opposition Web sites and censor one of the last channels through which Eritreans can exchange information with the outside world.
War and violence remain a major threat to journalists in countries such as Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia, Burundi, Central African Republic (CAR), and even Nigeria. Journalists have sometimes been direct targets. As Ivory Coast’s government launched air raids on the rebel-held north of the country in early November, pro-government militias attacked the offices of four private newspapers, while other publications considered pro-opposition were banned, and many of their staff went into hiding. In the DRC, hostilities in the east, including the temporary fall of Bukavu to Rwandan-backed rebels in June, were accompanied by a rise in attacks on the press.
In the DRC and Ivory Coast, conflict has come with a worrying upsurge in xenophobic and violent propaganda in the media, mainly on state broadcasts and
in pro-government newspapers. When hostilities resumed in Ivory Coast, foreign radio broadcasts were silenced, and Ivoirian state media began broadcasting virulent antirebel and anti-French propaganda calling on people to take to the streets. This stopped only after appeals from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and a threat of U.N. sanctions. In the DRC, press freedom groups and the country’s media watchdog complained about anti-Rwanda and anti-Tutsi speech on a national television program, but it was still broadcasting at year’s end.
Repressive governments in countries such as Rwanda, Gabon, and Ethiopia frequently invoke the specter of “hate” media and ethnic violence to clamp down on critical reporting. Governments cite the role that media, notably RTLM radio, played in inciting the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which at least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in less than three months; media outlets linked to Hutu political leaders, who organized the genocide, helped to fuel the climate of ethnic hatred and direct the killing. Rwanda’s current Tutsi-led government used RTLM as an excuse to delay the debut of private radio stations.
Radio remains the most popular and accessible medium in most African countries and is therefore the most sensitive. Countries such as Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, and Equatorial Guinea have no independent radio stations. In Rwanda, private stations were allowed on the air for the first time since the 1994 genocide, but in the current climate of government intimidation and self-censorship, they broadcast little independent news. In Cameroon, where the long-ruling President Paul Biya was returned to power in October elections, the government has used opaque licensing rules to silence private radio stations that carry reports it does not like.
Even in countries with relatively open conditions for the press, authorities have sought to influence radio programming, especially at politically sensitive times. In Uganda, which is debating the introduction of full multiparty democracy, President Yoweri Museveni has said FM radio stations that concentrate on politics rather than development should be punished, and his information minister has threatened to close stations that insult the president. Presidential elections in both Namibia and South Africa were accompanied by allegations that public broadcasters gave ruling parties disproportionate amounts of airtime.
Many African countries retain abusive criminal laws that can be used to threaten, detain, and harass journalists. But in countries such as CAR, Senegal, and the DRC, movements to lift criminal penalties for press offenses are gathering steam. In a bid to convince the European Union to lift sanctions, Togo implemented reforms that eliminated prison sentences for most press offenses. And in Sierra Leone, where newspaper editor Kamara is serving a two-year jail term, the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called for the government to abolish laws on seditious and criminal libel. These moves are welcome, but history shows that African governments may find new ways to clamp down on critical reporting.
Julia Crawford, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, along with Africa Research Associate Alexis Arieff, researched and wrote this section. Thomas Hughes, a media development consultant based in West Africa, wrote the summary on Liberia. Nigerian journalist Sunday Dare contributed to the summary on Nigeria.
At year’s end, 26 journalists were in prison in Africa for their work: 18 in Eritrea, two each in Togo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and one each in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Niger, and Ethiopia. This is a stark increase from the end of 2001, when 15 journalists were in African jails. The jump is attributable mainly to Eritrea’s appalling record.
Also during 2002, overzealous riot police shot one journalist to death on January 12 in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. Jimmy Higenyi was the only reporter killed in the line of duty in Africa in 2002, while 2001 was the first year in two decades when no journalists were killed there for their work. And despite Higenyi’s death, the trend may last, with African rulers under increasing pressure from donors and civil-society groups to end impunity and aggressively track down journalists’ murderers. This was the case, most recently, in Burkina Faso, where the December 1998 murder of editor Norbert Zongo unleashed waves of civil unrest; and in Mozambique, where widespread indignation over the botched investigation into the November 2000 killing of Carlos Cardoso, founding editor of the now defunct business daily Metical, could compromise the governing FRELIMO party’s chances to retain power.
In 2002, African journalists continued to garner public support at home and abroad. This situation has compelled certain African leaders, such as Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi, who has long dismissed Ethiopia’s nonstate media as the “gutter press,” to acknowledge their role as government watchdogs. The creation of regional infrastructures to deal with press freedom issues is also advancing, while the press is helping to establish democracy in Africa.
Radio broadcasting remains the most effective way to reach people in Africa. Radio’s vital role in the flow of news and opinions has inspired media activists to intensify their lobbying of governments that still resist private broadcasting. In March, three years after Ethiopia passed a broadcast law, officials finally began issuing licenses to private radio station owners, leaving only three African countries–Angola, Eritrea, and Zimbabwe–with airwaves that are closed to private competition. Because of their curbs on the circulation of information and continued harassment and jailing of journalists, CPJ placed both Eritrea and Zimbabwe on its 2002 list of the “10 Worst Places to Be a Journalist.”
On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, African journalists gathering in Pretoria, South Africa, endorsed the African Charter on Broadcasting, which was agreed upon at a global press freedom conference in May 2001. In October, the Banjul, Gambia-based African Commission on Human and People’s Rights added enforcing the broadcast charter to its roster of official activities. Aiming to serve as a blueprint for Africa’s broadcast policies and laws, the charter focuses on airwave liberalization and the effects of globalization on the continent’s emerging broadcast industry.
Also in October, the commission adopted a Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression, which stresses the “fundamental importance of freedom of expression as an individual human right, as a cornerstone of democracy and as a means of ensuring respect for all human rights and freedoms.”
But some observers have serious reservations about how the commission, a nonjudicial body, will enforce these measures. The Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression, proposed by the anti-censorship group Article 19, for example, aims to serve as a benchmark for African governments’ compliance with Article 9 of the 1986 African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, which guarantees press freedom. But the declaration does not explain how its provisions can be enforced against delinquent governments. The declaration also aspires to boost free speech within the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) initiatives.
African heads of state, led by South African president Thabo Mbeki, developed NEPAD in 2001 to increase foreign investment in African countries. Tied to US$64 billion in promised investments from Western powers, NEPAD seeks to achieve a continent-wide growth rate of 7 percent by 2015 through democracy promotion and good governance. But in April, NEPAD’s clause on good governance prompted an intense row between some African leaders and Western governments seeking to punish Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe for his regime’s illegal land seizures and repression of the opposition and independent press. Nigeria and South Africa, encouraged by Western NEPAD backers to force Zimbabwe to improve its human rights record, proved unwilling to confront President Mugabe.
Officially launched in July, the AU is the latest avatar of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which led Africa’s independence from colonial rule. Modeled after the European Union, the AU is expected to work on poverty alleviation and market development. According to a November World Bank report, strong evidence suggests that a free press can help reduce poverty and boost economic development. However, the AU’s founding texts blatantly ignore the painful struggle of African journalists to secure more freedoms.
On August 12, CPJ wrote to AU secretary-general Amara Essy to voice concerns that the organization’s constitution fails to protect press freedom. “The language of this new constitution marks a significant setback for press freedom and freedom of expression in Africa, both of which were enshrined in the constitution of the OAU, the precursor to the AU,” CPJ wrote. At year’s end, the AU had still not replied to CPJ’s letter.
Meanwhile, the Internet continues to penetrate the continent slowly, despite restrictive laws hastily passed by many governments to control business and other opportunities connected to the technology. And African journalists and citizens appear eager to take advantage of the Internet. In February, a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report concluded that Zimbabwe, with more than 100,000 citizens online, ranks among Africa’s foremost Internet users, although a Post and Telecommunications Act empowers the government to intercept e-mails in the name of “national security.” In December, Zimbabwean security agents accused journalist Lewis Machipisa of “spying for the BBC” after discovering an e-mail that he had allegedly sent to the British broadcaster, which has been banned from Zimbabwe since 2001. The accusation forced Machipisa to go into hiding.
According to the UNDP, 4 million Africans use the Internet regularly, with more than 50 percent of them in South Africa. “There are now 38 countries with 1,000 or more dial-up subscribers, but only 11 countries with more than 20,000 subscribers–Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe,” the report said. The UNDP cited inadequate telecommunications infrastructure as the main hurdle to the Internet’s further expansion.
There is hope, however, that more Africans will be able to join the global Internet community. On May 27, a group of African telecommunications experts gathered in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, to launch a US$639 million undersea fiber-optic cable. The 26,448 kilometer (16,200 mile) cable links 10 African countries with Europe and Asia.
Yet despite the remarkable gains of recent years, press freedom in Africa remains quite vulnerable. In September, West African journalists hosted the 10th annual meeting of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) in Dakar. IFEX, with more than 50 members (including CPJ and several African journalist groups), coordinates international press freedom advocacy. In assessing IFEX’s first decade of work, Cameroonian journalist Pius Njawe told the Dakar meeting that IFEX advocacy has forced some African governments to stop their most blatant repressions, such as sending police to close news outlets whose reporting angers authorities.
“But governments are quite clever,” added Njawe. “They have turned to other forms of harassment.” For example, instead of directly shuttering an offending newspaper, they now withhold advertising, creating financial hardship and sometimes even forcing a paper to close for lack of money. While there is a general consensus that the African press is freer than it was 10 years ago, “it’s difficult for me to say,” said Njawe. “In the past, the threat was an open threat. Now the threat is more subtle.”
Yves Sorokobi is program coordinator at CPJ. Adam Posluns and Wacuka Mungai are the Africa program researchers at CPJ. They contributed substantially to the research and writing of this section. CPJ’s mission to Ethiopia was partially funded by the Freedom Forum.
]]>The controversy over Ouattara’s citizenship has been at the heart of the country’s ongoing unrest, which grew much worse in 1993, when then president Henri Konan Bédie sacked Ouattara as prime minister. Bédie concocted the concept of Ivoirite (“being a true Ivoirian”) in response to anxieties caused by mass immigration from neighboring countries. In early August, the RDR joined the unity government of the current president, Laurent Gbagbo, to consolidate the national reconciliation initiated by Gbagbo in late 2001. But on September 19, disgruntled soldiers from Ivory Coast’s Muslim north staged a mutiny. By year’s end, the insurgency, also described by state media as a botched coup attempt and a “terrorist” attack, had turned into an active rebellion, effectively splitting the country in two.
The rebels, known as the Ivory Coast Popular Movement (MPCI), have demands similar to those of Ouattara’s RDR, as well as the sympathy of the RDR’s base constituency of Muslims and other northerners. At first, the MPCI advanced rapidly toward the capital, Abidjan, which is in the predominantly Christian and animist south. But troops sent to the Ivory Coast from France to protect Western and French interests in
its former colony soon contained the rebels. The seeming collusion between the MPCI and the RDR, the only political party that did not condemn the rebellion, prompted state officials to accuse Ouattara, who later fled abroad, of attempting to destabilize the country. By December, the RDR leader was openly endorsing the MPCI’s demands and askingfor Gbagbo’s resignation.
A number of death squads also became active in the confusion, killing mostly pro-opposition figures. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials detained and beat journalists suspected of anti-government bias, and Gbagbo’s supporters destroyed the offices and equipment of pro-RDR news outlets.
CPJ and other international press freedom groups condemned the attacks on journalists, as did the Press Freedom and Media Ethics Observatory, the leading Ivoirian journalists’ organization, which pleaded with “all insurgents, all militants and all young people, whatever their political affiliation, to show tolerance toward journalists and media houses.” Communication Minister Sery Bailly also condemned the attacks, saying that “recourse to violence is retrogressive and reducing any organ or journalist to silence is a collective impoverishment.”
But with suspicions running wild, Ivoirian journalists soon became embroiled in the civil strife, with reports and opinions in the press increasingly carrying religiously intolerant and xenophobic arguments. In December, the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues said that it was collecting “evidence” likely to be used in international courts against the “Ivoirian hate media.” Foreign observers, journalists, and diplomats concurred that local media had greatly contributed to the spread of anti-foreigner and anti-immigrant feelings that, coupled with the dispute over Ouattara’s citizenship, had precipitated the explosion of deadly violence in this nation once noted for its political stability and economic success.
A large section of the pro-Gbagbo press corps has repeatedly accused foreign media of biased and insensitive reports that misrepresent the Ivory Coast, where an estimated 40 percent of the population is foreign-born. A September 22 editorial in the ruling Ivoirian Popular Front party daily, Notre Voie, for example, called the BBC, Radio-France Internationale (RFI), and Agence France-Presse “the other adversaries of the Ivory Coast” because they allegedly sympathize with the RDR and with the oppressed northern and Muslim people. That same day, the government jammed the broadcast signals of FM stations that relay programs from the BBC, RFI, and the Pan-African station Africa No 1. The head of the official National Audiovisual Committee, Jérome Diegou-Bailly, explained, “In a state of war, one must manage the information in order not to spread death and disruption among the population.”
Almost 1,000 people have been killed since the start of the rebellion. Ivoirian authorities have blamed the conflict on Burkina Faso and Liberia, from where two rebel groups launched December attacks on towns along Liberia’s border with the Ivory Coast. The French evening daily Le Monde first revealed credible information supporting the theory of foreign involvement in the Ivoirian crisis in an October 10 report accusing Burkina Faso of training and arming the rebels. Another French paper, the weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, later added that the rebels were partly financed by Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi, who then blamed the West for destabilizing the Ivory Coast “to exploit its riches.”
Tassouman
Le Patriot
The courtyard of the office building that houses two Abidjan dailies, Le Patriot and Tassouman, was raided by police.
That same day, Tassouman had published three articles reporting that bandits had robbed a vehicle belonging to Interior Minister Boga Doudou. Sources in the capital, Abidjan, said that after the paper appeared that morning, Tassouman received an anonymous call telling them the story was wrong. Shortly thereafter, the paper received a fax from Cabinet Director Alain Dogou inviting Tassouman editor Kone Satigui, as well as Généviève Kouassi and Beugré Mireille, the reporters who penned the stories, to his office for a meeting.
All three journalists went to Dogou’s office, where he castigated them for publishing the articles. The minister then told the journalists that the stolen car belonged to Clotilde Ohouochi, minister of solidarity, health, and social security, and not to the interior minister.
While Satigui, Kouassi, and Mireille were at the meeting, about eight police officers entered the courtyard of the papers’ building. The police asked journalists from both publications where the journalists responsible for the articles were. When the staff told the police that the reporters were out, the officers began beating the journalists. Though the police did not enter the offices of the two newspapers, they threw two canisters of tear gas into the courtyard before leaving.
Tassouman and Le Patriot, both owned by the same company, are aligned with the opposition Rally for Republicans and its leader, Alassane Dramane Ouattara. Sources said that the Interior Ministry later denied that it had ordered the police raid in reprisal for the articles and claimed instead that a group of unruly officers had acted without authority.
Mamadou Keita, Le Patriote
Keita, a reporter for the opposition daily Le Patriote, was attacked and severely injured by supporters of the ruling Ivoirian Popular Front (FPI) while covering an FPI rally. The journalist was later admitted to a hospital with wounds on his head and back.
Alain Amontchi, Reuters TV
Reuters cameraman Amontchi was attacked by demonstrators outside the French Embassy in the capital, Abidjan, where he was covering a spontaneous rally of thousands of youth demanding that French officials hand over opposition leader Alassane Dramane Ouattara, whom soldiers had accused of mounting a bloody military uprising that broke out on September 19. Ouattara later left the Ivory Coast. The demonstrators heckled Amontchi, yelled slurs against the presence of foreign media in the country, and later damaged his recording gear. He suffered no serious injuries.
Tassouman
Le Patriote
Abidjan Magazine
A group of about 50 people looted and ransacked the offices of the private Mayama Media Group, publisher of three Ivory Coast pro-opposition newspapers, said several sources in the capital, Abidjan. The mob smashed computers and other equipment and damaged printing presses while chanting pro-government slogans. The newsrooms of Le Patriote and Tassouman, both daily newspapers, and the weekly Abidjan Magazine were destroyed. All three are close to the opposition Rally for Republicans, a party led by former prime minister Alassane Dramane Ouattara, whom some state officials suspect may be behind a bloody military uprising that began on September 19 in the northern part of the country.
No one was hurt in the attack since the news staff of the three papers–long accused by the government of working to destabilize the country with biased reporting–have been working from home since the crisis started. The military standoff has pitted a group of disgruntled soldiers from Ivory Coast’s Muslim north against troops loyal to the government, which is mostly staffed by southern Christians.
Radio Nostalgie
The newsroom of the popular private broadcaster Radio Nostalgie, located in the business district of the capital, Abidjan, was raided by 20 armed men dressed in fatigues. The attackers scared off the station’s security personnel and destroyed surveillance cameras before smashing computers and broadcast equipment. According to news reports, Radio Nostalgie owner, Hamed Bakayoko, estimated the losses at more than 200 million CFA francs (US$296,000).
The station had abruptly stopped airing news programs on the morning of September 19, when a bloody military uprising erupted in the northern part of the country. Some state officials have accused station owner Bakayoko, as well as leaders of the opposition Rally for Republicans (RDR), of which he is an outspoken member, of masterminding the rebellion. Bakayoko also holds controlling stakes in the private Mayama Media Group, which publishes three pro-RDR newspapers.
Gaël Mocaer, Radio France Outremer
Mocaer, an independent French filmmaker who was on assignment for the television division of the publicly funded French broadcaster Radio France Outremer, was detained by Ivoirian counterintelligence services when he arrived in the capital, Abidjan. Authorities did not explain why they arrested the journalist, who was in Abidjan to shoot a feature story on the bloody military crisis that erupted in the country on September 19. Mocaer was released without charge on the afternoon of October 23 and immediately left the country. When contacted by CPJ, the journalist declined to comment on the incident.
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