New Burundi Law Censors Media

Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza has approved a new media law which critics have condemned as an attack on press freedom. 

The law forbids reporting on matters which could undermine national security, public order or the economy.

Ruling party officials say the law will help professionalise the media and ensure that journalists do not incite hatred in a country where some 300,000 people died in ethnic conflict between 1994 and 2005

Note

• Nkurunziza is a former rebel leader who was elected president at the end of a brutal civil war in 2005

• Nkurunziza was re-elected in 2010 in polls which were boycotted by the opposition