Arresting and charging journalists with criminal offences for doing their job is an unjustifiable restriction on freedom of expression. MISA has campaigned for the repeal of laws criminalising freedom of expression, including criminal defamation, insult, sedition and false news laws and we are currently the focal point for southern Africa in a Pan-African campaign to repeal such laws, lead by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights’ (ACHPR) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, Advocate Pansy Tlakula. MISA was gravely concerned, therefore, to report an increase in physical attacks on journalists and other media workers since 2012. In 2013, this included a brutal assault that left Absalom Kibanda, Chairperson of the Tanzania Editors Forum (TEF) and Editor-in-Chief at New Habari Corporation, without his left eye. mote media freedom. On 15 May 2013, MISA welcomed the Pan-African Parliament’s launch of a continental campaign to promote and protect press freedom and persuade African governments to abolish criminal defamation and “insult laws” that restrict the publication of information in the public interest. The resolution is timely, considering that international monitoring organisations have only rated five out of Africa’s 54 countries as free. MISA urges the Pan-African Parliament to further call on the citizens of these countries to pressure their governments to adopt legislation that decriminalises media practice. In January 2013, Tanzania also experienced the suspicious death of Radio Kwizera journalist Issa Ngumba, who was found dead in Kajuhuleta Forest in the north-western part of the country. His body had gunshot wounds and showed signs of torture. On World Press Freedom Day 2013, South African police arrested Hein Coetzee, a reporter for the Afrikaans language Die Son (The Sun) newspaper, while covering a mob attack on Eastern Cape’s African National Congress (ANC) provincial chairman Marius Fransman. Coetzee, who took photographs of Fransman and his bodyguards as they fled the scene, was charged with crimen injuria and riotous behaviour. Coetzee said the police who arrested him assaulted and pepper sprayed him before they confiscated his cell phone and camera. He was detained overnight despite carrying media credentials, which clearly identified him as a journalist and not part of the mob. Not all bad news While 2013 was marked by a depressing wave of hostility towards journalists from governments, corporations, political supporters and citizens, in some cases, Africa saw major continental efforts to pro15