Newspaper journalist assaulted in Bungoma

A journalist based in Bungoma County is recuperating at a Webuye hospital after being attacked by unknown assailants as he headed home last night.

Newspaper reporter Godfrey Wamalwa, who has already reported the matter at Webuye police station, claims the goons warned him against writing negative stories about Bungoma County.

Wamalwa said the assailants ambushed him at around 9pm and roughed him up and poured an unknown chemical on his face before fleeing.

Wamalwa has said he now fears for his life.

This is not the first time a journalist has been assaulted.

In September, Citizen TV’s correspondent in Nakuru, Evans Asiba, was assaulted by police officers while on an assignment to find out whether private schools in the county had been closed following the government’s directive ordering the closure of all schools in the wake of the teachers’ strike.

Asiba was assaulted by police officers while conducting a spot check at Nakuru lions primary school.

The policemen were said to be responding to a call by the school’s principal who wanted the journalist forcibly ejected from the school’s premises.

He was arrested and locked up at Bondeni police station but was later released on a police bond.

The Citizen TV journalist is demanding for justice.

In August, a South Sudanese journalist was shot dead while leaving his office.

Peter Julius Moi, who worked with the independent New Nation newspaper in Juba, was shot by unknown assailants as he headed home after work, his colleagues at the paper said.

A Reuters reporter saw his body on Thursday lying in the field where he was shot.

The killing came just days after President Salva Kiir issued a warning to journalists.

“The freedom of press does not mean that you work against your country. And if anybody among them does not know this country has killed people, we will demonstrate it one day on them,” Kiir told a news conference.