President of the West African Union of Journalists, Mr Mohammed Garba has criticised the continuous detention of four journalists in Egypt saying it is a deliberate attempt to gag journalists in the country.
Addressing journalists in Abuja shortly after leading a peaceful procession, Mr Garba, who is also the President of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, appealed to the Egyptian government to immediately release the affected journalists who have been in detention for eight months without trial.
Father of one of the journalists, who works for a foreign news media, Aljazeera, Mr El-Shami Noshi said his son Abdullah is now on hunger strike following his detention without trial.
He also noted that his son’s only offence was that he was caught carrying a camera as a journalist.
The hashtag #FreeAJStaff has gone viral worldwide, with a quarter of a billion impressions on Twitter alone since 1 February 2014. The campaign has already had an outpouring of popular and political support worldwide, with institutions including the White House, European Union and the United Nations calling for the release of the journalists.
The campaign looks set to ramp up further with public events taking place in Nairobi, Sydney, Manila, Islamabad, Doha, Amman, Ankara, Berlin, London, Rio, Montreal, Washington DC and San Francisco on Thursday. Every continent of the world will see action.
It is hoped that the campaign will force Egyptian authorities to hasten the release of Peter Greste, Mohammed Fahmy, Baher Mohamed and Abdullah El Shami.