Eritrea, Egypt, Ethiopia ranked top journalist jailers in Africa - report

Eritrea, Egypt, and Ethiopia have been ranked as the top three countries in Africa for imprisoning journalists in 2023, according to a report released by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The findings shed light on the escalating challenges faced by media practitioners across the continent.

Eritrea, often criticised for its repressive regime, emerged as the worst offender in Africa, with 16 journalists currently behind bars.

The nation also holds the dubious global distinction of being the seventh-worst jailer of journalists worldwide. Shockingly, those detained in Eritrea include individuals involved in some of the longest-known cases of journalists imprisoned globally, with none of them ever being officially charged.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of journalists imprisoned as of December 1 rose significantly from 31 in 2022 to 47 in 2023. Ethiopia, grappling with internal strife despite a peace agreement signed in 2022, saw the number of jailed journalists rise to eight.

The arrests occurred after these journalists covered the ongoing conflict in the country's Amhara State between regional militias and federal forces.

Cameroon closely followed Ethiopia, ranking as the third-worst country in the region with six journalists behind bars. The grim data also revealed media crackdowns in Senegal, Zambia, Angola, and Madagascar, with Senegal registering five jailed journalists – a stark increase for a country that had only appeared on the CPJ census twice before in 2008 and 2022.

Notably, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Angola, Burundi, Nigeria, and Madagascar each had one journalist imprisoned in 2023.

The charges brought against the Democratic Republic of Congo's Stanis Bujakera Tshiamala, involving a combination of the penal code and new digital and press laws, underscored concerns about the continued criminalisation of journalism.

While Africa grapples with this disheartening trend, global findings by CPJ indicate that Israel became one of the leading jailers of journalists following the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.

Alarming figure

Overall, the CPJ documented 320 journalists behind bars on December 1, 2023, marking the second-highest number since the census began in 1992. This alarming figure serves as a disturbing barometer of entrenched authoritarianism and governments' determination to suppress independent voices.

A worrying revelation from the report is that more than half of the journalists listed in the census – 168 individuals – face false news and anti-state charges, such as terrorism, in retaliation for their critical coverage.

Shockingly, in 66 cases, those detained haven't been informed of the charges they are facing. The report highlights gratuitously cruel conditions faced by imprisoned journalists, as well as subverted due process, with authorities prolonging pre-charge and pre-trial detention.

The global landscape of press freedom is under siege, with governments resorting to transnational repression to threaten and harass journalists beyond their borders.

Examples include Moscow's issuance of arrest warrants for Russian journalists living abroad and Ethiopia's forceful return of an exiled journalist from Djibouti to face terrorism charges.