Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) has joined journalists, activists and civil society organisations from all over the world in calling for the release of three Al Jazeera journalists currently detained in Egypt.

195 civil society organisations from around the world have called on the UN to put government accountability and independent media at the centre of a new framework for global development.

Following the criminalisation of peaceful protest in Egypt in November 2013, 57 organisations and individuals release joint statement against arrests of Egyptian bloggers and political activists.

A large group of media and human rights organisations has successfully petitioned the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights for leave to act as amicus curiae, or friends of the court, in a case which raises the use of criminal defamation and insult laws to silence government critics.

On 29 November, Midweek Sun photographer Tshekiso Tebalo was assaulted by Mochudi Center Chiefs’ football team official, Sebele Morakanyane, at the University of Botswana Stadium, as he covered a game between the Mochudi Center Chiefs and the Township Rollers.

Representatives of freedom of expression organisations in Africa that are members of IFEX met in Accra, Ghana, on 9 and 10 December 2013 to develop a framework for regional networking in Africa.

Dozens of media freedom groups are calling on the Prime Minister of Somalia to rescind the arbitrary eviction order currently faced by the Shabelle Media Network. The eviction would place Radio Shabelle staff in immediate physical danger.

Photojournalist Walter Dlamini was photographing police brutality during a protest when an “officer pointed a shotgun at Dlamini’s face and demanded why he [was taking] pictures of the officers who were at work”.