Nigeria
Journalist escapes fatal beating at funeralPosted Mar 19 2010
After the March 7 murder of hundreds of Christians near the village of Jos, what started as a mass funeral for 40 of the victims turned into a scene of violence last week in central Nigeria.
Many gathered in Dogo Nahawa, Nigeria, to mourn the victims of machete attacks by Hausa-Fulani Muslims. Murtala Sani, a reporter for the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, was sent to cover the funeral, but was attacked after the state governor’s adviser on religious matters, Choji Gyang, told nearby funeral-goers that Sani was an ethnic Hausa-Fulani.
Will Connors, a journalist covering the funeral for The Wall Street Journal, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), “He [Sani] was inches from losing his life. They wanted to kill him and throw his body in the mass grave with the others.”
CNN correspondent Christian Purefoy took video of the beating instead of trying to help Sani. After wondering on camera whether to get involved, Purefoy asked his cameraman to continue filming and chose not to intervene.
Instead, the police ended the violence with a gunshot into the air, and Sani was taken to a nearby hospital in Jos where he was treated for injuries to his head and body. His car and equipment were destroyed in the attack.
CPJ reports that other journalists were harassed during the funeral, including Agence-France Presse reporter Aminu Abdulla. He says that people at the funeral told him to prove that he was a Christian by reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Abdulla was able to get away from the crowd but lost equipment left in Sani’s car.