"Pius Njawe; arrested for work as journalist" by Adam Nossiter, New York Times | July 16, 2010
DAKAR, Senegal — Pius Njawe, one of Africa’s most celebrated journalists, died in a car accident Monday in Virginia, according to his newspaper’s website and news agency reports. He was 53.
Mr. Njawe, who founded the newspaper Le Messager (The Messenger) in Cameroon at age 22 in 1979 after selling newspapers on the street as a child, was considered a symbol of opposition to the autocratic regime of Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982 in his resource-rich but poor Central African nation.
Mr. Njawe was killed when the car he was riding in broke down on a Virginia highway. A truck struck his vehicle, killing him instantly, according to news media reports and Le Messager’s website.
That sure is suspicious, huh?
Repeatedly arrested, imprisoned, fined, threatened, and harassed, Mr. Njawe had a career that was seen abroad as a case study of the risks African journalists take in setting themselves up as critics of the government. At the time of his death, Mr. Njawe was in the United States attending a meeting of Cameroonian expatriates militating for change in their country.
Militating?
I'm starting to think someone sabotaged his car and ran him down.
Mr. Njawe’s career as a stubborn critic of the government coincided with the unfolding of Biya’s increasingly repressive rule. He was arrested about 126 times and jailed at least three times; in 1998 he was sentenced to two years in prison for reporting that Biya had had heart trouble, though he was released before serving the full sentence. He wrote about his time in jail in “Bloc-notes d’un Bagnard’’ (“Convict’s Notebooks’’), published in 1998.
“The African media has lost a truly courageous individual whose bravery in the face of government intimidation served as an inspiration for other journalists,’’ David Dadge, director of the International Press Institute, said on the institute’s website.
Mr. Njawe was arrested for the first time in 1981; his newspaper was seized in 1990 for reporting on the bloody suppression of a riot and he was arrested for “insult to the head of state’’ later that year. In 1992, Le Messager was banned and he was forced into exile in nearby Benin, where he put out another paper, also called Le Messager, according to the Press Institute. In 1996, he was arrested and imprisoned on charges of insulting the president and members of the National Assembly.
“He was a pioneer,’’ said Stephen W. Smith, professor of African studies at Duke University, who has written about Mr. Njawe’s career. “He put his whole life into being a journalist. It came out of his pores.’’
Mr. Njawe was born in Babouantou, Cameroon. He leaves his wife and eight children.Tragic.
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Hard to believe there is more Senegal news in the obituary section than the rest of the paper, isn't it?
Too busy promoting patsy terrorists and wars, I guess.
