President Isaias Afwerki has turned Eritrea into Africa’s “biggest prison for the media” since 2001 and four journalists have died in captivity, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Monday. Eritrea, which RSF ranks as the worst abuser of media freedom in the world, permits no independent media and the state-run newspapers and television network do not allow stories that challenge the nation’s leadership or its policies.

Read more from Reuters here: Eritrea is Africas “biggest prison for media”: RSF | Eritrean News – assenna.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF.org) slammed the 6-month suspension, saying it was designed to silence media critics.

“This decision clearly aims to gag Rwanda’s main sources of independent news in the run-up to the August 2010 presidential election,” RSF said in a statement Wednesday.

“It suppresses all critical journalism and deprives Rwandans of an alternative to the state newspapers,” RSF added.

Freedom of speech remains a delicate issue in a country where corruption of the media and the political endorsement of ethnic hatred during the early 1990s led to genocide, following years of dictatorship.

Rwanda’s Media High Council said the decision to suspend the Umuseso and Umuvugizi newspapers (shown above) was based on their erroneous content.

“We are acting on the basis of the content of the publications. Elections are months away,” said Patrice Mulama, Executive Secretary of Media High Council.

“This is not the first time we are suspending Umuseso for inciting the public. We suspended this paper in 2004 and 2009,” he said. “We are challenging the professionalism of these papers and we have a firm ground to explain the case at hand to court.”

(Editing by Richard Lough and Simon Cameron-Moore)

The VOA, as reported by Bloomberg and others, responded with strong language of their own.

The situation generally shows us both:
1) The massive impact that the airwaves have on the political situation in oppressed countries and

2) The need for non-aligned, truly independent, media outlets — and the need to somehow establish this within the boundaries of non-free nations.

We’ll be following this developing story.

On September 3, 2009, Sarata Jabbi-Dibba, vice president of the Gambia Press Union and reporter for the independent newspaper, The Point, was granted a presidential pardon and released from prison. Dibba, along with six other journalists, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for defaming President Jammeh. The sedition charges stemmed from an incident in which the GPU issued a statement criticizing the president for slandering the memory of the late Deyda Hydara, editor of The Point, who was brutally murdered in 2004.

At the time of the arrest June 15, 2009 Dibba was still nursing her 7 month old son. She was allowed to have her son with her the first three days. Prison officials took him away on the third day. Dibba and her lawyer went to the prison director. The director relented and allowed family members to bring her son to the prison for breast-feeding.

Since her release, Dibba has resumed writing her column, “She, She, She”, which addresses women’s issues. It was her late editor, Deyda Hydara, who supported Dibba when she started the column. Dibba attributes Hydara as her reason for going into journalism.

In a country where journalists are under serious threats and subject to an array of human rights abuses, the courage displayed by Dibba and her colleagues is laudable. Their fallen comrade, Deyda Hydara lost his life fighting for press freedom. Hydara was killed one day after publishing an article railing against two new Gambian laws that infringed upon freedom of expression. His killers were never found. The six journalists remain committed to his memory even if it means losing their own freedom.

A total of 25 journalists were imprisoned in Sub-Saharan Africa in retaliation for their journalism, and nearly 90 percent of these journalists were detained without charges in secret detention facilities, according to an annual census of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Countries as wide ranging as Eritrea, Iran, and the United States were on the list of nations who had imprisoned journalists without charge.

Eritrea by far leads the list of shame of African nations that imprison journalists, with at least 19 members of the media held incommunicado in its secret prisons. Eritrea was the fourth leading jailer of journalists worldwide, trailing only China, Iran and Cuba. Eritrea’s neighbor, Ethiopia ranked second among African nations whose prisons held the most journalists.

Early this year, to take one example, the following Radio Bana journalists were banned in Eritrea:
Bereket Misguina, Radio Bana
Mulubruhan Weldegebriel, Radio Bana
Ghirmai Abraham, Radio Bana
Issak Abraham, Radio Bana
Meles Nguse, Radio Bana
Yirgalem Fesseha, Radio Bana

Detailed accounts of all imprisoned journalists and a statistical breakdown are at http://www.cpj.org/imprisoned/2009.php

Thanks to CPJ’s Mohamed Keita for forwarding this post.

Magistrate David Simusamba charged Fred M’membe,1995 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, and the daily Post with contempt of court over an August op-ed on the ongoing trial of Post News Editor Chansa Kabwela, according to defense lawyer Remmy Mainsa. Contempt of court charges may be used against authors of opinion pieces that comment on ongoing trials, according to Zambian law.

If convicted, under the Zambian penal code, M’membe and the paper could be fined up to 2 million kwacha (US$430) each, Mainza said. In the event of non-payment of the fines, M’Membe could be imprisoned for up to five years and the newspaper’s assets could be seized, he said.

“A magistrate has already dismissed a contempt charge against Fred M’membe, but the authorities are determined to censor coverage of this embarrassing story and so are trying again to silence the paper,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. “The authorities must drop all charges against the paper and its staff immediately.”

Kabwela, news editor for The Post, was arrested in July for circulating two photographs of a woman giving birth without medical help outside the University Teaching Hospital, the newspaper reported. On June 10, Kabwela had sent the photos with a letter to the vice president, the minister of health, the cabinet secretary, the archbishop of Lusaka, and two civil society groups, urging that a medical workers’ strike be settled. Kabwela was charged with circulating obscene materials.

Magistrate Charles Kafunda, who oversees Kabwela’s trial, previously brought contempt charges against M’membe and other Post staffers in August. The charges were later dismissed in September by High Court Judge Albert Wood, according to news reports.

Radio Free Africa thanks Gina Robbins for locating this story.

Students at Irrua Special Teaching Hospital

As reported by Patrick Ochoga of Leadership Nigeria , Journalists who hadgone to cover the press briefing by resident doctors at Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital (ISTH) were rough-handled by the security personnel attached to the hospital.

Many of the medical staff at the hospital had gone on strike to protest inadequate training and treatment of staff as compared with management.

See additional details on this story from AllAfrica.com

(Thanks to Gina Robbins for locating this story)

The head of the United Nations agency tasked with defending press freedom

Ohu, a 45-year-old assistant news editor at influential private daily The Guardian, was shot dead September 20 by unidentified gunmen as he answered a knock at the front door of his house in a northern suburb of Lagos.

today condemned the recent killing of a Nigerian news editor, and called on authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Bayo Ohu, the assistant news editor of the Nigerian daily newspaper, The Guardian, was shot dead in his home on 20 September as he was preparing to attend church, according to a news release issued by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

“The shooters removed the victim’s laptop and mobile phone from the house, leading to speculation that the killing may have been linked to his work as a journalist, according to the International Press Institute (IPI),” the news release added.

UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura spoke out against the killing, stating that freedom of expression is a basic human right and its corollary, press freedom, is essential for democracy and rule of law.

Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO

“Therefore, I trust that the authorities, in the interest of the whole of Nigerian society, will do all they can to bring the culprits of this crime to justice,” Mr. Matsuura said.

See the latest news on Bayo Ohu

(Thanks to Gina Robbins)

From the Daily Press (before government control in 2003)

A power-sharing arrangement in Zimbabwe between President Mugabe and the rival Movement for Democratic Change has mandated a free press. However, as reported in this week’s Economist, those freedom’s have yet to materialize that the only available daily is still a government mouthpiece.

Zimbabwe continues to rank miserably on the Freedom House international press freedom rankings and despite agreements to open up the print outlets to opposition voices, there is no sign of the government releasing control of television or the radio airways. We’ll be following this story to see the effects, if any, of the new power-sharing government on the advancement of new news outlets.

May 2, 2009

Washington, DC — Ghana, Mali, and Mauritius had the highest press freedomranking in Africa in Freedom House’s annual Freedom of the Press Report released in Washington, DC.

The three countries were ranked 53rd in the world on an index of press freedom. The press in South Africa, Cape Verde, Namibia and Sao Tome and Principe were also rated as “free,” although South Africa saw its press freedom rating decline in the last year.

At the other end of the scale, Eritrea, Libya, Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea were ranked in the bottom ten countries in the world, with the press there categorized as “not free.” The four countries are among the worst press abusers in Africa.

Overall in sub-Saharan Africa, 23 countries (48 percent) were classified as “not free”, seven (15 percent) as “free” and 18 (37 percent) as “partly free”. There were no status changes this year.

In addition to South Africa, Botswana, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Lesotho, Mauritania, Senegal and Tanzania also saw their press freedom rating decline.

“Official harassment of the press as well as increased use of legal means to restrict media freedom were key factors in many declines,” the organization wrote in the report.

Senegal’s press freedom declined again this year due to “an increase in both legal and extralegal action taken against media,” according to Freedom House. Last year, Senegal was downgraded from free to partly free because of the “growing authoritarian trend in the policies of President Abdoulaye Wade, exemplified by the postponement of municipal elections.”

Comoros, Sierra Leone, Angola and Liberia improved their press freedom rating.