After killing a man in self-defense, Benson turned himself in to Malawi's police. More than two years later, he was still waiting for a court hearing, while his body showed the scars from the long wait in Lilongwe's main prison. The Open Society Justice Initiative is spearheading a Global Campaign for Pretrial Justice, documenting the costs of excessive and unnecessary pretrial detention. Watch Benson's story in the video accessible through the link provided.

The New York-based global press freedom watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Wednesday condemned the Ivorian police's assault on a journalist, Cybèle Athangba. CPJ said in a statement made available to PANA here that Athangba, a reporter with the daily 'La Nouvelle', was attacked while covering a protest of about 100 police officers in front of the police headquarters in the economic capital, Abidjan.

Jennifer Abalo struggles to support two of her own and two of her late sister's children. She lost her father, sister and two of her children to Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) violence between 1998 and 2004, but like thousands of other victims she has never received any compensation, despite government promises. In 2010 Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni promised monetary compensation to 10,000 victims of the two-decade-long war between the LRA and the government.

The Ethiopian government has passed new legislation that criminalises the use of Internet-based voice communications such as Skype and other forms of Internet phone calling. Authorities have also installed a new filtering system that monitors the use of the Internet in the tightly-controlled Horn of Africa country in a move seen as targeting dissidents.

The Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation, which happens to be the sole telecommunication service provider in Ethiopia, has deployed or begun testing Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) of all Internet traffic. This post analyses the results on web access, following on from previous analysis of censorship in China, Iran, and Kazakhstan.

Inspector General of Police Kale Kayihura is forming a new press unit of police to act as an ombudsman for complaints by journalists and as a public relations department. 'The inspector general is committed to professionalizing the police force,' Simon Kuteesa, who will run the new unit, said. 'We are not re-inventing the wheel here - it's all part of a strategic initiative.' The new unit is expected to be operational in three months, he said.

In this broadcast, Africa Today speaks with Dame Babou, Senegalese journalist and host of 'Africa Time' and Hamadou Tidiane Sy of Questaf.com on recent developments in West Africa - the coup in Mali and the Tuareg insurgency in Northern Mali.

In this podcast, Africa Today speaks with Dr. Isaac Saney on Latin American Studies, Race in Cuba, and Cuba's role in Southern Africa. Dr. Saney is the author of 'Cuba a Revolution in Motion'.

The second issue of the Thinking Africa Newsletter for 2012 is available. Articles include:
- uBuntu, the Law and Public Secrets
- Conference on Land Practices reminder
- uBuntu and Subaltern Legality
- Programme of the Thinking Africa 'uBuntu: Curating the Archive' colloquium, 9-20 July 2012.

ARTICLE 19 has recently highlighted the critical issue of the right to information for internally displaced persons (IDPs). The international NGO delivered practical training sessions on the Right to Information for internally displaced persons to regional leaders and representatives of local community based organisations. Over 20 participants from the Coast province attended the training sessions held in the Rift Valley, Western and Nyanza regions of the country. The program aims to build the capacity of IDP leaders and civil society organisations to request and utilise government held information.

Ethiopia’s only ISP, state-owned Ethio-Telecom, has just installed a system for blocking access to the Tor network, which lets users browse anonymously and access blocked websites. At the same time, the state-owned printing presses are demanding the right to censor the newspapers they print.

A study has cast doubt on the innovative role that some claim Twitter, the 'microblogging' social media tool, can play in generating new information during disasters, although it did find that 'tweets' speed up the exchange of existing information. An analysis of tweets sent by people in the United States following the emergency at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant found that most linked to traditional news outlets, such as the New York Times and CNN, for updates.

Five million Brazilian farmers are locked in a lawsuit with US-based biotech giant Monsanto, suing for as much as 6.2 billion euros. They say that the genetic-engineering company has been collecting royalties on crops it unfairly claims as its own. The farmers claim that Monsanto unfairly collects exorbitant profits every year worldwide on royalties from 'renewal' seed harvests.

The Writing Rights blog has an article about a communications tender that was awarded to TBWA/Hunt Lascaris in December 2010 by the Western Cape provincial government. During 2011, a group of civil society organisations lodged an independent and separate complaint with the Public Protector about the legality of the procurement of the tender. This group of complainants consisted of Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU), Social Justice Coalition (SJC), Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC), Right 2 Know Western Cape and Equal Education (EE). Recently, the public protector found, among other things, that it was improper for two of the premier's special advisers to be on the bid evaluation committee.

South African social justice organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi have released their first e-newsletter. Visit the website through the URL provided to subscribe.

Egyptians continue their million-man march in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez to voice their anger at the lenient sentence handed to ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak. The protesters gathered in the capital's iconic Liberation Square and other cities to urge the retrial of Mubarak and his two sons, demanding the death penalty for the octogenarian dictator. The demonstrators also called for unity among all political parties to prevent the re-emergence of the Mubarak-era dictatorship.

The hunger strike is the latest victory for workers, with encouraging support coming from a wide range of political ideologies – from anarchists to left-leaning liberals and radical members of the youth wings of the governing ANC-led alliance.

Progressive small farmer organizations in Mexico scored a victory over transnational corporations that seek to monopolize seed and food patents. When the corporations pushed their bill to modify the Federal Law on Plant Varieties through the Committee on Agriculture and Livestock of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies on March 14, organizations of farmers from across the country sounded the alarm. By organizing quickly, they joined together to pressure legislators and achieved an agreement with the legislative committee to remove the bill from the floor.

Activists, supporters and officials of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), made the majority of indecent expressions recorded by a Media Foundation for West Africa study during weeks seven and eight monitoring of language use on radio. Twenty one (21) out of the total of 28 indecent expressions recorded were made by NDC officials and supporters.

Sierra Leone's Anti-Corruption Commission has summoned Ghana's investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, to testify in a landmark corruption case involving a top government official. In a joint story with Sorious Samura aired on Al- Jazeera, the award winning Ghanaian journalist shocked the nation after he exposed a criminal ring defying an existing moratorium on timber export in the country. The indicted men allegedly claimed to be representing a top government official and accepted bribe to facilitate the registration of their illegal timber export business.