By Eloge Kaneza
Throughout the Horn and East Africa regions, journalists pursue their profession in a very hostile climate. In Somalia, where Shebab terrorists and tribal wars are raging, in Ethiopia and DR Congo, where armed conflict is a continual fact of life, and even in Rwanda, Burundi, and Kenya, which are not at war, journalists face the threat of imprisonment, harassment, and physical attack.
“Unfortunately, we find that East Africa and the Horn of Africa are not an easy place for journalists,” explained Muthoki Mumo, the Africa Program Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ, an international press freedom organization based in New York. “Members of the press face a range of challenges and threats in the course of doing their jobs, from physical attacks and imprisonment to censorship through the enactment and enforcement of bad laws, to even harassment, particularly in the cases of women journalists.”
According to Mumo, countries and regions undergoing conflicts pose a particularly high threat of physical risk for journalists. Examples are Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, eastern DR Congo.
“We can see Somalia as an example where during decades of conflict, the country has become one of the most dangerous environments in the world for the media. A high number of journalists have been killed while doing their work. We can also look at South Sudan as an example of this where years of civil war devastated the media community and where journalists were also killed in the course of their duty. More recently, if we look at Ethiopia, we can see that the outbreak of civil war between 2020 and 2022 brought higher risks including physical risks for journalists.”
Felix Balume Hangi, Managing Director of the Mweso community radio station in the Masisi territory of North Kivu province in eastern Congo, is one of the journalists who have fallen victim to armed conflict. In February 2024, he was forced to move to the provincial capital of Goma, in the hope of being far from persecution and able to continue his profession, which is very dear to him.
He fled to Goma on a motorcycle, along with his employees and their families, and said the escape was an ordeal.
“You leave the area where there’s the M23 (a Congolese rebel military group) and enter the area where there are other armed groups, [including]the Wazalendo (local militias connected to the Congolese Government),” recalled Balume.
The journey was full of risks, and of losses. “They ask you for a lot of documents, the road is complicated… You must look for people to carry the motorcycle and yourself on their back, because the bridge has collapsed. It’s not at all easy to cross. We had to walk for two days…and there’s a lot of equipment, several devices that have been stolen, ransacked even in the offices. [Finally] we found ourselves here among the other displaced journalists.”
What’s it like to be a journalist in Africa?
Sadibou Marong, head of the Africa Bureau at Reporters sans frontières (RSF) (Reporters Without Borders), a Paris-based organization that campaigns for freedom of the press, mourns the situation of journalists in conflict zones: “They (journalists in Africa) are targeted by both armed groups and regular armies. In the DRC, for example, where community radio stations run by local journalists are a valuable source of information, particularly in war zones, we have seen many journalists forced into exile and their equipment destroyed.”
According to RSF, when journalists are prevented from doing their work, their rights, as well as the community’s rights are violated. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights supports this view, with Article 19 enshrining the right ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’
Marong said, “The targeting of local media [in Africa] is not a new phenomenon. Their journalists are direct victims of the conflicts, and this is very regrettable…This is a serious attack on press freedom to which the authorities in countries such as the DRC, Somalia, Burundi and Rwanda must react urgently if free information is not to disappear.”
In general, women journalists are not imprisoned in eastern DR Congo or the Horn of Africa, but in mid-April of this year Sandra Muhoza was arrested by the intelligence services in Ngozi province in northern Burundi, where she was based, before being transferred to Bujumbura prison in the economic capital. She is being prosecuted for violating the integrity of the national territory and manifesting racial aversion for comments she made in a WhatsApp group of Burundian colleagues. Reporters without Borders, however, claims the charges against Muhoza are entirely politically motivated and prompted by the government’s interest in silencing critics.
Meanwhile another female journalist working in East Africa, Floriane Irangabiye, was recently pardoned by Burundian president Evariste Ndayishimiye, after two years of imprisonment. Initially sentence to 10 years, accusations included undermining state security and collaborating with rebel movements. Reporters without Borders campaigned for her release, contesting the charges as false and politically motivated.
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RSF considers that Irangabiye should never have been arrested in the first place, and calls on Burundian authorities to protect press freedom “by releasing journalist Sandra Muhoza” and ensuring that Burundian journalists can “freely carry out their work without fear of reprisals.”
“RSF is mobilizing for them and for all African journalists behind bars… And in Burundi, despite a few positive signals from President Évariste Ndayishimiye, the environment remains very hostile to journalism. Once considered one of the most dynamic in the Great Lakes region, Burundi’s media landscape has been considerably impoverished since the failed coup attempt of 2015 and the ensuing crisis. This must change.”
Human Rights Watch is also doing its best to watch out for the human rights of journalists. But Clémentine de Montjoye, senior researcher in the Africa division at Human Rights Watch, was recently denied access to Rwandan territory after landing at the Kigali International Airport.
“Space for independent criticism of people to express opinions on the ruling party’s governance and policies is very restricted….,” de Montjoye told Amjambo. “There are several cases of commentators and journalists who have been jailed in violation of the freedom of expression. In addition, we’ve documented numerous cases of journalists and commentators and critics who have died or disappeared in suspicious circumstances.”
The Rwanda Media Commission (RMC) claims that there is no truth in de Montjoye’s assertions about the lack of press freedom in Rwanda.
“I think it is an opinion that does not hold facts,” said Emmanuel Mugisha, Executive Secretary of RMC. “Freedom of expression is based on the right to seek information, and then receive it, and then use it in expressing yourself. So, when you look at those three elements, the right to seek information has been first of all guaranteed by the constitution of Rwanda.”
Yet currently in Rwanda, three you-tubers are in detention, and a BBC reporter is serving a 10-year prison sentence. Human Rights Watch has denounced both arrests.
Who are the main aggressors against journalists?
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), state actors are usually the main oppressors, including police who lock journalists up behind bars, or shoot teargas at them when they are covering a protest. Other agencies or arms of government are also complicit in threatening media, including legislators that enact repressive laws, judiciaries that weaponize the courts against the media, powerful people within the government who orchestrate targeted attacks by the military, police, and intelligence services, on journalists in retaliation for covering sensitive issues such as corruption.
“Generally, what we’ve seen is that the main aggressors against the media are state actors,” explained Muthoki Mumo, the Africa Program Coordinator for CPJ. “However, this does not mean that threats cannot come from other places. We’ve seen journalists being harassed and targeted, particularly online, by members of the public.”
The media in some regions seems particularly susceptible to targeting by the public. For example, according to Mumo, “During the civil war in Ethiopia a lot of journalists spoke about the hostility against the media that came not just from the state but also from members of the public. And we also see non-state actors and militant groups, for instance Al-Shabab, targeting journalists with threats and even killing them in Somalia. So, while state actors remain the main source of threats to the media and journalists, we do see that other actors can pose a risk to the work of the press.”
Sadibou Marong, Director of the Sub-Saharan Africa region of RSF, where press freedom is severely limited partially because of threats from armed groups, said that the environment in east Africa and the Horn of Africa are also challenging.
“The Ethiopian press freedom situation is extremely difficult, as evidenced by the country’s place in the Press Freedom Index, and its ranking in the bottom fifth of the Index… At least 10 journalists were imprisoned in 2023, at least 2 of them in forced labor camps in the middle of the desert. Most of them worked on the Amharic and Tigray conflicts and were detained on serious charges such as ‘promoting terrorism.”’ Marong said.
The African countries ranking lower than Ethiopia on the Press Freedom Index are Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Rwanda, Somalia, and Sudan. Marong noted: “East Africa has a difficult context in terms of press freedom, as can be seen in Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and Eritrea.”
According to Marong, in Eritrea “the press, like society, is subject to the absolute arbitrariness of President Issaias Afeworki, responsible for crimes against humanity. according to a June 2016 UN report. There are no independent media in Eritrea, a country infamous for the longest detentions of journalists in the world, with 11 journalists imprisoned without trial.”
Foreign as well as local journalists are at risk in many countries. “In July 2023, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention affirmed that the imprisonment of Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak, held since 2001 in disastrous conditions, is arbitrary, and called on the Eritrean authorities to reveal his place of detention,” said Marong.
And in some African countries, no foreign or national media are allowed to operate at all. Instead, governments force media outlets to relay the regime’s propaganda, instead of reporting freely.
“If we take the case of the Sahel countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger today, which are ruled by juntas, we realize that access to information is becoming ever more restricted, and they have specifically suspended the broadcasting of foreign media, mainly French – such as France 24, RFI and TV5 Monde,” Marong said.
Marong is concerned that freedom of the press is under political pressure in Africa as a whole. For example, he said that in Togo, journalists are being targeted by spyware, and arrests and arbitrary and disproportionate decisions by the High Authority for Audiovisual and Communication (HAAC) towards information professionals are frequent.
“[Freedom of the press] is increasingly threatened by those who are supposed to be its guarantors. In other words, political actors are not sufficiently protecting press freedom, and worse, they are sometimes its gravediggers,” Marong warned, noting that of the 48 sub-Saharan countries included in the 2024 press freedom index rankings, only five of them – Cape Verde, Mauritania, Namibia, South Africa, Sychelles are reported as in a satisfactory position. Eritrea ranks lowest in the world on the index for press freedom.
In many countries women journalists face additional risks to those faced by men: “On top of the dangers inherent to the profession, there is the risk of being exposed to violence. In some countries, women journalists are particularly exposed to online and gender-based violence and attacks in the course of their work. So danger lurks not only in the traditional reporting environment, or in the new virtual environment of the internet and social networks, but also in the place where they should be safe – in their newsrooms.”
Journalists are targeted during election periods in many countries, presumably to control messaging. For example, in DR Congo, Stanis Bujakera, who works for international media, was detained in September 2023, which prevented him from covering the December elections. Bujakera had previously reported on the killing of an opposition candidate.
“During election periods, political players also try to use the media as instruments of influence and power. This approach has been observed in Senegal, DR Congo, and Nigeria, where political figures have sometimes even set up their own media. We have also seen how, in the run-up to elections, political power has reinforced its control of information: abusive suspension of the Internet, expulsion or interruption of foreign media.”
Activists and journalists gathered at Baraza Media Lab, in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, in a vigil in memory of Rwandan journalist John Williams Ntwali, who died in a road accident, according to a Rwandan police report. They asked the Rwandan authorities to investigate the circumstances of his death and to allow foreign investigators to travel to Rwanda to help with the investigations ( Éloge Willy Kaneza)
Can I help?
In the face of such restrictions on freedom of the press in many countries in Africa, Muthoki Mumo is calling on international colleagues for help:
“If you’re living and operating in a country that has relative freedom, consider the global cause for press freedom. Consider what journalists in other parts of the world are going through, and ask yourself – ‘Do I have the ability to influence, to effect change, even as far away as I am?’
I believe that many people do have some power to do so. Speak to your own elected representatives, speak to the people who influence your foreign policy, make it clear that human rights and press freedom are important…When we stand in solidarity with journalists around the world who are facing repression we can effect change that might be bigger than we imagined.”
Balume, from North Kivu, sends a clear message. “Help us, so that we can continue to inform, train, and educate.”
