Zone9 bloggers arrested on April 25th in Addis Ababa. (Photographs from Global Voices Online/by Endalk)
By Mohamed Keita
In Africa, the past few months have offered troubling optics of journalists on trial for the practice of independent journalism: Peter Greste in a cage in a prisoner’s white jumpsuit in Egypt, Bheki Makhubu in leg irons in Swaziland and Tesfalem Waldyes in handcuffs in Ethiopia. The arrests and prosecutions of journalists not only chill others from digging deeper into stories, but there are also other, more indirect and insidious forms of censorship that obfuscate inconvenient truths that we should know.
Last week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, criticized prison sentences against several journalists jailed in Egypt after they reported on the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which authorities consider a terrorist organization.
“It is not a crime to criticize the authorities or to interview people who hold unpopular views,” said Pillay, echoing the “journalism is not a crime” slogan of the global campaign to free three Al Jazeera journalists held in Egypt.
As troubling as these arrests have been, they represent a larger trend in Africa of criminalizing the practice of independent journalism in the broadest sense, including blogging and social media.
Read more at america.aljazeera.com.
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