WORST JAILER OF JOURNALISTS
LRC stands third on the list of countries with the worst acts towards journalists in Africa 2022
And into this next report,
Reporter Who Captured South Sudan President Salva Kiir's Wetting Trousers Has Been Found Hanged, Others Missing, According To Nation-Times Media. Amid the outrage trailing the incident, a journalist working for the state-run television SSBC told Sudans Post that security forces were conducting a search to identify the journalists who covered the embarrassing event.
An SSBC journalist who refused to be named said:
“Some of our colleagues from the SSBC were being forced to help identify the wrongdoer and this is immediately after the video was made public. Even they searched our phones and it appeared that they are still looking for him,” The journalist said he has “heard that three of the journalists based in Juba have disappeared” but cannot authenticate as to if what is up to now a rumour is true or is linked to the National Security Service (NSS). Also, an East Africa Legislative Assembly former candidate and former journalist from Kenya, Bukyana Julius revealed that a journalist who shared this video is now dead.
Julius, who disclosed this on his Twitter page, said he reportedly committed suicide as his body was found hanging in his residence, while others are missing one after the other. “All journalists that covered the state event where the @SouthSudanGov president Salva Kir wetted his pants are missing one by one and some found dead. JOURNALISM IS NOT A CRIME.” Indeed it is not a crime, but an Avenue for truths to be told to the masses, and needful information dispersed to improve the knowledge of the grassroots and of course the leaders as well. In all the commotion, the President of the Union of Journalists of South Sudan (UJOSS),
Oyet Patrick released a statement saying no journalist was arrested nor missing over the matter. We are yet to find out the truths to these stories, If really these journalists are being abducted and some murdered as almost every news outlets has reported in the last few days or if this one piece of writing proves very other news rooms wrong. But whatever the case it would not be a new thing under the sun, as Lrc has been doing that long enough to be listed as the third African country with the worst record of jailed journalists!
Colonial LRC with its entrenched human rights violation records stands at the third position on the list of countries with the worst records of jailers and killers of journalists in Africa 2022.
The information is contained in the Committee to Protect Journalists CPJ, 2022 report on the state of justice for attacks on the press around the world on Wednesday, December 14, 2022.
According to the report, Undaunted gathers that the number of journalists jailed worldwide set yet another record this year and that the Committee’s annual prison census found out that 363 journalists were detained, 57killed, 49 disappeared and 54 held hostages as of December 1, 2022, a new global high that overtakes last year’s record with an increase of 20%. In Africa, the CPJ identified 56 of these journalists, out of which at least five come from LRC, which was ranked in the third position and has appeared in the association’s prison census every year since 2014. LRC comes after Eritrea second, and Egypt first in Africa.
The journalists who could be identified were; Amadou Vamoulké, former Director General of the Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV), arrested on July 29, 2016, Kingsley Fomunyuy Njoka, a freelance reporter detained on May 15, 2020, Mancho Bibixy of Abakwa FM, arrested on January 17, 2017, Thomas Awah Junior detained on January 2, 2017, and Tsi Conrad, freelance journalist arrested on December 8, 2016. The CPJ says these five journalists were arbitrarily detained under an opaque judicial system that includes the use of military tribunals to prosecute journalists, who are civilians under international law. From records at the level of Undaunted, the CPJ list is in exhaustive as Journalist Samuel Wazizi who died in detention had not been taken into account, Journalist Wawa Jackson just released from the Nkambe prison has not been counted, and Journalist Parfait Siki still in detention has not been counted either.
Many of these journalists suffer intimidation and harassment by colonial LRC military in Cameroon and a majority have even escaped for their dear lives. At the world level, this year’s top five jailers of journalists are from Iran, China, Myanmar, Turkey, and Belarus, respectively. According to the CPJ, the arrest and detention of journalists are a “key driver behind authoritarian governments” increasingly oppressive efforts to stifle the media and to keep the lid on broiling discontent in a world disrupted by COVID-19 and the economic fallout from Russia’s war on Ukraine.” Undaunted regrets that the CPJ report takes into account the impact of the war in Ukraine and sidelines the impact of the war declared on peace loving and justice seeking Ambazonia by the genocidaire Paul Biya to almost confirm black lives probably don’t matter to them.
