MEDIA FREEDOM - The African Mirror

Dec

28

2020

Ethiopian police arrest Reuters cameraman

MEDIA FREEDOM

A Reuters cameraman, Kumerra Gemechu, was arrested in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and will be kept in custody for at least two weeks, his family said. He has not been charged. No reason was provided to the family for Thursday's arrest, and police did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment. Kumerra, 40, has worked for Reuters as a freelance cameraman for a decade. At a brief court hearing on Friday, where no lawyer was present, a judge ordered Kumerra's detention for a further 14 days to give police time to investigate, the family said. In a statement on…

Dec

15

2020

By The African Mirror

Record number of journalists imprisoned in 2020 – report

MEDIA FREEDOM

A record number of journalists were imprisoned during 2020, as governments cracked down on coverage of the coronavirus pandemic or tried to suppress reporting of civil unrest, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has announced. At least 274 journalists were in jail as of December 1, the most since the New York-based group began collecting data in the early 1990s, the report said, up from at least 250 last year. Protests and political tensions were the cause of many arrests, with the most made in China, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, it said. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, authoritarian leaders tried…

Sep

25

2021

By The African Mirror

Burundian journalist briefly held while investigating blasts – official

MEDIA FREEDOM

BURUNDI on Friday briefly detained a journalist investigating a grenade attack in the commercial capital Bujumbura, his radio station and an official said, after a series of explosions this week that killed at least five people. Radio Bonesha FM said their reporter was arrested while investigating a grenade incident that was said to have killed two people on Thursday. "Radio Bonesha FM journalist arrested on Friday morning by the police has just been released. Aimé Richard Niyonkuru is still waiting for his recorder. He spent many hours at the Special Research Office under the hot sun," the station wrote on…

Sep

16

2021

By The African Mirror

Police beat journalist, fire tear gas during Congo election protest

MEDIA FREEDOM

POLICE beat a journalist and fired tear gas to disperse a small crowd in Democratic Republic of Congo's capital Kinshasa during an opposition protest over alleged election meddling, eyewitnesses said. Around 20 protesters gathered in response to a call by opposition leader Martin Fayulu and were met with stiff resistance from police. Police beat and temporarily detained Patient Ligodi, a journalist working for Radio France International, while he was interviewing Fayulu. "They threw me to the ground and started to hit me," Ligodi said in a video shared on social media. Video shot by broadcaster France 24 showed Ligodi being…

Jan

29

2021

By The African Mirror

Ramaphosa endorses the digital platform for the safety of journalists in Africa

MEDIA FREEDOM

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA THE media has a crucial role to play in the historic and continent-wide movement by Africans to build a continent of their dreams. Our march towards the achievement of the aspirations of Agenda 2063 – of the Africa we want – requires that we nurture and protect a free and independent media. It requires that we vigorously defend the right of journalists to do their work, to write, to publish and to broadcast what they like, even if we disagree with some or all of it. Africa is on the march to entrench a culture of human rights,…

Jan

28

2021

By The African Mirror

Tunisian press syndicate criticise police over night arrest

MEDIA FREEDOM

TUNISIAN police slapped and arrested a photojournalist working at night despite his having an authorisation to be out after curfew, the national press syndicate said on Wednesday amid criticism of the security forces' handling of protests. Islem Hkiri, a freelance photographer, was charged with breaking curfew and assaulting a public servant. He had earlier published pictures of police using pepper spray during a recent surge of protests in Tunisia, a democracy since the 2011 revolution that inspired the "Arab spring". Protesters have decried both inequality and police abuses. Security forces have arrested more than 1,200 people including many under the…

Sep

11

2021

By The African Mirror

Escalating Sinophobia in SA’s media

MEDIA FREEDOM

IN “Seven Centuries of Slander”, an essay in the current issue of The New York Review, Sarah Lipton reviews two significant new books on the history of anti-Semitism. She concludes that they offer the same lesson: “The well of gullibility has to be primed through frequent repetition, especially with the backing of seemingly authoritative sources.” This places a particular responsibility on socially authorised forms of making public meaning, in particular those that, like the media and the academy, present themselves as operating in the public interest. In South Africa, journalism, like the academy, is frequently animated by a strong sense of its own…

Sep

09

2021

By The African Mirror

Afghan journalists beaten in Taliban detention, editor says

MEDIA FREEDOM

TWO Afghan journalists were beaten in police custody this week after covering a protest by women in Kabul where they were detained by the Taliban, their editor said. Zaki Daryabi, founder and editor-in-chief of the Etilaat Roz newspaper, shared images on social media of two male reporters, one with large, red welts across his lower back and legs and the other with similar marks on his shoulder and arm. Both men's faces were also bruised and cut in the pictures, which were verified by Reuters. When asked about the incident, an acting Taliban minister, who was named in his post…

Jan

22

2021

By The African Mirror

Journalist shot dead in Ethiopia’s Tigray

MEDIA FREEDOM

AN Ethiopian journalist and his friend have been shot dead by an unidentified person in the northern Tigray region's capital Mekelle, according to an aid worker and a resident. Rights groups say press freedom has eroded since a November war between federal troops and forces loyal to the former ruling party of Tigray, which lost Mekelle at the end of that month. Dawit Kebede, who worked for Tigray regional state TV, was shot on Tuesday night while in a car with friends, one aid worker said. "Both were shot in their head and their bodies were found in a car…

Sep

06

2021

By The African Mirror

Tanzania suspends second newspaper in less than a month

MEDIA FREEDOM

TANZANIA has suspended another newspaper accused of false stories even though President Samia Suluhu Hassan had pledged to uphold media freedoms quashed by her predecessor. Raia Mwema, a leading Swahili-language weekly, was suspended for 30 days from Monday, for "repeatedly publishing false information and deliberate incitement," Gerson Msigwa, the government's chief spokesperson, said in a statement. Msigwa cited three recent stories, including one about a gunman who killed four people in a rampage through a diplomatic quarter of Tanzania's main city Dar es Salaam. The article linked the gunman to ruling party Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), the statement read, adding…