RSF 2017 Press Freedom Index – ever darker world map

The 2017 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) shows an increase in the number of countries where the media freedom situation is very grave and highlights the scale and variety of the obstacles to media freedom throughout the world. The World Press Freedom map is getting darker. The global indicator calculated by RSF has never been so high, which means that media freedom is under threat now more than ever. Three more countries sank into the darkest depths of the Index in 2017: Burundi (down 4 at 160th), Egypt…Read more

Indian police assault journalist

Indian authorities should identify and discipline New Delhi police officers who assaulted journalist Meghnad Bose yesterday, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Bose, a reporter with The Quint, a news website, was broadcasting a Facebook Live video outside the city's Jamia Milia Islamia University, where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was receiving an honorary doctorate, when police assaultedBose, the journalist said. "Authorities should swiftly discipline the police officers responsible for assaulting Meghnad Bose simply for doing his job," CPJ Asia Program Director Steven Butler said from Washington, D.C. "The police should train…Read more

Blogger stabbed to death in Maldives

Authorities in the Maldives should swiftly identify and bring to justice those responsible for the murder of blogger Yameen Rasheed, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Rasheed died after he was found with multiple stab wounds in the stairway of his apartment building yesterday, according to media reports. Rasheed was transported to Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital, where he died while receiving treatment, according to Raajje TV. He had 16 stab wounds to his chest, neck, and throat, the independent broadcaster reported. Rasheed, 29, was known for his satirical political commentary on his…Read more

Indian journalist charged under Official Secrets Act

Authorities in India should immediately drop all charges against Poonam Agrawal, a journalist for the English-language news website The Quint, the Committee to Protect journalists said today. Police in Nashik, roughly 170 kilometres (105 miles) northeast of Mumbai, on March 28 opened a criminal case against Agrawal on charges of spying and criminal trespass under the Official Secrets Act, a 1923 anti-espionage law. They also charged her with criminal defamation and abetment of a suicide under the Penal Code, according to the journalist and media reports. If convicted of all charges, she faces…Read more

NTV reporter kidnapped, beaten over post about Ugandan First Lady

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appalled to learn that TV reporter Gertrude Uwitware was kidnapped andbeaten during the weekend over her coverage of a dispute between well-known university academic Stella Nyanzi and Janet Museveni, who is Uganda's minister of education and President Yoweri Museveni's wife. Gertrude Uwitware, who covers health issues for Nation Television (NTV), Uganda's leading privately-owned TV channel, was walking along one of Kampala's safest and most touristic avenues on the afternoon of 8 April, when a man and a woman forced her to get into their car at gunpoint. After…Read more

Ugandan ruling party youth convicted of assaulting journalists

This statement was originally published on hrnjuganda.org on 29 March 2017. Five youth supporters of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party have been found guilty of assaulting three Entebbe-based journalists, thereby occasioning them actual bodily harm and maliciously damaging their property contrary to sections 335 and 236 of the Penal Code Act, respectively. “The accused persons had the intention of stopping journalists from covering the events (elections). The complainants were just doing their work as journalists and them being stopped [and] beaten was willful and unlawful. Therefore the accused persons are convicted…Read more

Nigerian blogger, publisher jailed on defamation charges

Committee to Protect Journalists Nigerian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release blogger Kemi Omololu-Olunloyo and newspaper publisher Samuel Welson, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The two have been held in a maximum security prison for more than a week as they await trial on charges of defamation and publishing false news. Police on March 13 arrested Omololu-Olunloyo, who runs the blog HNN Africa, at her house in the southwestern city of Ibadan, for publishing on Instagram a letterpurportedly from a churchgoer accusing a woman of using juju to convince a pastor and other men to…Read more

Reporter beaten by police while investigating police violence in Kenya

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the beating that Standard Media Group reporter Isaiah Gwengi received from a special border police unit in the western town of Usenge yesterday and calls for an investigation into this unacceptable act of police brutality. After arresting Gwengi, members of the Quick Response Team (QRT) stripped him naked and gave him a severe beating, inflicting injuries to his head and parts of his body, and confiscated his phone and SIM cards. Gwengi was arrested together with human rights activist Rodgers Ochieng while interviewing Usenge residents who have been…Read more