(IFJ/IFEX) – The following is a 28 June 2002 IFJ press release: The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the largest journalists’ organisation in the world, condemns the statements made on Wednesday 26 June in Dakar by Jules François Bocandé. Following a gala match involving Senegal’s national football team, which had returned from Japan the day […]
(IFJ/IFEX) – The following is a 28 June 2002 IFJ press release:
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the largest journalists’ organisation in the world, condemns the statements made on Wednesday 26 June in Dakar by Jules François Bocandé. Following a gala match involving Senegal’s national football team, which had returned from Japan the day before, Bocandé reacted violently against Senegalese journalists, accusing them of writing untruths about the preparations for the World Cup quarter final match against Turkey. Speaking live on national television, Bocandé, a member of the national team’s training personnel, called on the Senegalese people “to take up their responsibilities” toward the journalists and threatened to lodge a complaint against the journalists. “These remarks are serious threats to the freedom to inform and can be perceived by public opinion as a call to physical violence against journalists, especially in the context of the passion that followed the elimination of the Senegalese team in the quarter finals of the World Cup,” stated Mohamadou Mahmoun Faye, coordinator of IFJ’s Africa Bureau in Dakar.
IFJ believes that such remarks can contribute to the creation of a climate of hate and suspicion that can set public opinion against journalists and, at the same time, constitute an obstacle to the freedom to inform. The organisation calls on the Senegalese authorities to condemn Bocandé’s remarks and to guarantee a safe work environment for Senegalese journalists.
