Panter Foundation alumnus abducted
- Attack on Lesotho journalist Kananelo Boloetse
- On September 5, Kananelo Boloetse, editor-in-chief of the newspaper *Newsday*, was abducted from his home in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho.
On September 5, 2026, Kananelo Boloetse, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Newsday in Lesotho, was abducted from his home in Maseru by three armed men. They blindfolded him, bound him with cable ties, gagged him with tape, and took him to a remote area near the Phuthiatsana River, where he was tortured. The 37-year-old journalist and media activist — former chair of the Media Institute of Southern Africa — was questioned about his journalism and his work with the civil-society organization “Section 2,” which he co-founded. His captors threatened to kill him if he spoke publicly about the incident, then left him with severe injuries on the Thaba Bosiu plateau, about an hour northwest of Maseru.
Boloetse had previously been arrested in 2021 during anti-corruption protests and later won a case before Lesotho’s Constitutional Court against a government attempt to declare a state of emergency to bypass normal constitutional-reform procedures. He took part in the taz Panter Foundation’s Africa workshop in 2023–2024, writing about Lesotho’s constitutional-reform struggle, and was more recently interviewed as an expert on disinformation and online fraud in Lesotho for the current workshop’s magazine.
He filed a police report on September 7; police say a special investigation team has been formed. Lesotho’s Information Minister visited Newsday‘s offices to express support. Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, and the International Press Institute have all condemned the attack and called for an independent investigation, and colleagues have launched a petition demanding accountability.
Lesotho’s Minister of Information and Communications, Nthati Moorosi, visited the offices of Newsday on September 7 to express her support for the media group.
“The abduction of and violence against Kananelo Boloetse constitute an extremely serious attack on press freedom in Lesotho,” said Sadibou Marong, Director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) for Sub-Saharan Africa. Amnesty International launched a petition. The International Press Institute in Vienna also called on Lesotho’s authorities to identify those responsible for the attack and bring them to justice. Boloetse’s colleagues also launched a petition to put pressure on Lesotho’s authorities.
Read the full text originally written in German by Christian Jakob.