Sierra Leone

New York, June 15, 2011--Police in Sierra Leone have arrested three suspects, including a police officer, for the killing of a reporter this Sunday during violent clashes over a land dispute on the outskirts of the capital, Freetown, according to local journalists. 

Ibrahim Foday, 38, a reporter at the private daily newspaper The Exclusive, was beaten and stabbed by assailants during an outbreak of violence between neighboring villages Kossoh and Grafton, 16 miles (25 kilometers) southeast of the capital, Freetown, according to Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ). Foday, a resident of Grafton, was attacked for taking photographs of Kossoh rioters. 

We write a lot at CPJ about the terrible things that happen to journalists because of their reporting, but we don't often get a chance to show you what happens to them after they are forced to flee their homes and land abroad. This video, about three such journalists, is worth watching.

The case had all the hallmarks of a sordid thriller. There was "a rogue politician, a journalist getting killed, a staunchly incurious police, and the media in frenzy," veteran journalist Lansana Gberie wrote in the New African, describing the fatal 2005 beating of editor Harry Yansaneh in Sierra Leone. 

CPJ’s Impunity Index spotlights countries
where journalists are slain and killers go free

New York, March 23, 2009 -- The already murderous conditions for the press in Sri Lanka and Pakistan deteriorated further in the past year, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in its newly updated Impunity Index, a list of countries where journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes. Colombia, historically one of the world’s deadliest nations for the press, improved as the rate of murders declined and prosecutors won important recent convictions.

New York, October 17, 2008--The director and a staff member of the Society for Democratic Initiatives (SDI), a Sierra Leone media advocacy group, say they are receiving death threats after publishing a report on press conditions late last month.

MAY 8, 2008

Posted June 6, 2008

Unity Radio
CENSORED

On May 8, 2008, the opposition-run Unity Radio station in Freetown was ordered shut down by the presidential press secretary, Sheka Tarawalie. Tarawalie said the station had installed an antenna that exceeded frequency regulations and was interfering with the airwaves of other radio stations. The station, however, was legally registered, and had not been banned from broadcasting by the Independent Media Commission.