Germain Cyrille Ngota Ngota

Across Continent, Governments Criminalize
Investigative Reporting

By Mohamed Keita

Across the continent, the emergence of in-depth reporting and the absence of effective access-to-information laws have set a collision course in which public officials, intent on shielding their activities, are moving aggressively to unmask confidential sources, criminalize the possession of government documents, and retaliate against probing journalists. From Cameroon to Kenya, South Africa to Senegal, government reprisals have resulted in imprisonments, violence, threats, and legal harassment. At least two suspicious deaths--one involving an editor, the other a confidential source--have been reported in the midst of government reprisals against probing news coverage.

At least 42 journalists are killed in 2010 as two trends emerge. Suicide attacks and violent street protests cause an unusually high proportion of deaths. And online journalists are increasingly prominent among the victims. A CPJ special report

Relying heavily on vague antistate charges, authorities jail 145 journalists worldwide. Eritrea, Burma, and Uzbekistan are also among the worst jailers of the press. A CPJ special report

We received a letter this week from Acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Don Yamamoto in support of our plea to Cameroonian President Paul Biya for an investigation into the death of Germain Ngota Ngota, editor of the Cameroon Express. Ngota did not receive adequate medical assistance while in government custody and died of illness on April 22, according to a prison death certificate that his family shared with journalists. Ngota and editors from two other publications were arrested February 25 in connection with their reports on corruption allegations involving a presidential aide. Here is Yamamoto's letter.

New York, April 22, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged by today’s death of newspaper editor Germain S. Ngota Ngota, whose health deteriorated while he was incarcerated in Cameroon. The death certificate for Ngota, editor of the private bimonthly Cameroon Express, determined that the journalist died from a lack of medical attention in Kondengui prison in the capital, Yaoundé, according to editors Hilaire Medjo of the weekly Nouvelle Vision and François Fogno Fotso of the weekly Génération Libre.