Njaru Philip
Njaru Philip. Journalist from Cameroon.
He has been targeted by state authorities because of articles he wrote about corruption and human rights violations by government officials. On election day October 12, 1997, he was arrested at a polling station, accused of spying, threatened, and interrogated. Soon after being released, he was accosted and beaten by political thugs employed by a local politician and the police commissioner. They left him unconscious with a fractured jaw and permanent hearing damage. On February 20, 1998, the same police commissioner arrested Njaru Philip while he was consulting a medical doctor in the government hospital. He was questioned and tortured about an article he had written the previous December. In June 2001, Philip Njaru was attacked by twenty policemen in Kombi town in southwest province, kicked and beaten with military belts and gun butts on the charge that he had refused to show the police his national identity card.
In 2003, Njaru Philip won the Hellman/Hammett Award granted by Human Rights Watch.
Text taken from the hrw.org