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Deadly Start to 2023 In Africa With Threats, Killings of Critics

A rash of killings across Africa has renewed focus on the risks facing those working to expose wrongdoing. The killing of two journalists in Cameroon and a respected human rights defender in eSwatini, along with the suspicious death of a well-known editor in Rwanda have raised questions about whether justice will be done. The cases also underscored the dangers of impunity - with such incidents sending an unsettling message to government critics and the free press, writes Kate Bartlett for VOA.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says that media freedom in Africa has deteriorated, and journalists are more vulnerable than ever before.

In 2022 alone, CPJ documented at least six journalists killed in sub-Saharan Africa and confirmed that four of them, Ahmed Mohamed Shukur and Mohamed Isse Hassan in Somalia and Evariste Djailoramdji and Narcisse Oredje in Chad, were killed for their work. Six journalists were killed in 2021 in connection with their work in Burkina Faso, Somalia, DR Congo, and Ethiopia.

CPJ continues to investigate the killing of a seventh journalist, also in Ethiopia in 2021, to see whether it was in connection with his journalism.

 

 

InFocus

M Kindzeka/Deutsche Welle

Cameroonians reading newspapers on the street (file photo).

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