Fatimé Dordji

Fatimé Dordji (born 1949) was a Chadian journalist and business leader. She was hired as a radio announcer as a young girl, and was the first female radio announcer in Chad, but lost that job in 1973 due to politics. François Tombalbaye, the dictator of Chad, was becoming more paranoid, and his authorities decided Dordji was an enemy of the state because she had named one of her children after Kalthouma Nguembeng, who was the president of the women's section of the party then in power, Parti Progressiste Tchadien. Nguembeng had been arrested in 1973 for purportedly hiring sorcerers to kill Tombalbaye, though Dordji claimed she had named her child before the arrest. Dordji was detained, let go shortly before her daughter was born, then imprisoned for 21 months. After Tombalbaye was killed in 1975, Dordji's husband became the ambassador to Libya, and she and him lived in Libya and later Belgium from 1978-1981. However, later Dordji's husband went back to Chad to become Minister of Education for Hissène Habré, and married another woman without telling Dordji; Dordji then left him. Dordji went to Libya and made her own living there. After Habré's government ended she went back to Chad, and again worked as a radio journalist. She later quit that job to run an import/export company.