Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa's Future

Algeria:

Abdelbaki Djabali, a correspondent of the daily El Watan, who escaped "death by road accident" on December 7, 2000, when his car was rammed off the road by a careening truck. His crime? Unrelenting exposes on corruption.

Lounes Matoub, A Berber singer, gunned down on June 26, 1998, at a roadblock on the road to his village in Beni Douala, for his outspoken criticisms of the government and Islamic groups. The Armed Islamic Group claimed responsibility.

Burkina Faso:

Norbert Zongo, a popular journalist, playwright, and human rights activist, whose investigations into official corruption earned him both a widespread audience and numerous death threats. He was gunned down in an ambush on December 13, 1998.

Chad:

Souleymane Guengueng, who after being unjustly imprisoned and tortured for two years in the late 1980s by the brutal Hissene Habre's regime, fought back courageously. He founded the Association of Victims of Political Oppression, and spent the next decade gathering testimony from fellow survivors and their families--over 700 people in all. The evidence provided critical material for Chadian and international human rights organizations to Pursue a case against Habre, who fled to Senegal with $11 million in loot after being overthrown in December 1990. In January 1999, an indictment was brought against Habre in Senegal's Supreme Court. Although the case was thrown out in March 2001, Guengueng should be honored for bringing about Africa's first "Pinochet case".

Egypt:

Salaheddin Mohsen, whom the authorities made a "martyr of free speech" (Index on Censorship, March 2001; p. 132). He was sentenced to three years in prison with hard labor on January 27, 2001 for the crime of writing a book Shivering of the Lights, which the authorities claimed "defamed Islam".

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an internationally acclaimed sociologist and founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies. He has spoken against religious intolerance and the rising tensions between Egypt's Muslim majority and Christian minority. In a crass attempt to hunt and silence the sociologist, Ibrahim was put on trial and government prosecutors accused him of harming Egypt's image with exaggerated reports, of accepting foreign donations without government permission, of using donated money for personal enrichment, and of bribing newscasters to report favorably on the center's work. But as it turned out, "the government had infiltrated the center and planted evidence, framing Ibrahim" (New YOrk Times, April 22, 2001; p. 5). On May 21, 2001, he was sentenced to jail for seven years. "This is politically motivated and the sentence is politically dictated," Ibrahim told the Associated Press on a mobile phone as the police escorted him from the courtroom. "It is a struggle and it will go on. I do not regret anything I stood for" (The New York Times, May 22, 2001: p. A7.)

Ethiopia:

Israel Sboka, publisher and editor-in-chief of the weekly Seife Nebelhal and Samson Seyoum, former editor-in-chief of Ethiop, both of whom, under persecution, fled the country in December 2000. Professor Asrat Woldeyes and Ato Tesfaye, gunned down by Tigrayan Peoples' Liberation Front assassins.

Ato Assefa Maru, an unrelenting advocate of freedom of association and individual rights, shot in cold blood by security forces in May 1997.

Alebatchew Goji, beaten and tortured to death while in police custody in July 1994.

Mustafa Idris, who mysteriously disappeared in 1994.