(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release: Four weeklies seized in one week RSF asks for the withdrawal of Article 11 from the press law Since the beginning of 2000, seven Mauritanian weeklies have been seized by authorities, including four in the last week of August (La Tribune, Le Carrefour, Inimich and El […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release:
Four weeklies seized in one week
RSF asks for the withdrawal of Article 11 from the press law
Since the beginning of 2000, seven Mauritanian weeklies have been seized by authorities, including four in the last week of August (La Tribune, Le Carrefour, Inimich and El Qods). Reporters sans frontières asks the Mauritanian head of state, Colonel Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, to see to it that Article 11 of the press law is withdrawn. All the newspaper seizures have been carried out in accordance with this article. The organisation believes that this article allows the Mauritanian state to exercise true censorship in the country. If the government continues to use this article as it has in recent weeks, the future of the private press appears to be uncertain in Mauritania. Between 1998 and 1999, Mauritanian newspapers were hit with twelve seizures and seven (one-to-three-month) suspensions.
Article 11 of the 25 July 1991 Edict-law on press freedom provides for “the ministry, by decree, to forbid the circulation, distribution or sale of newspapersâ¦that undermine the principles of Islam or the credibility of the state, damage the general interest or disturb public order and security⦔. In all such cases, the Ministry of the Interior is not required to justify its decision. It can simply send a newspaper and printer a “notice” banning the paper’s “circulation, distribution or sale”. Many newspapers have been the target of this censorship. In the course of the last three years, a dozen newspapers holding very different stances on issues have been targeted by such measures.
Numerous subjects can provoke government seizure: corruption, drugs, slavery, the Western Sahara situation, human rights, relations with Israel, Islamic militant networks, etc. The magazine Le Calame, one of the regime’s favourite targets, has been renamed “the most censured newspaper in Mauritania”, having been seized six times in 1998 and 1999. Since the beginning of 2000, La Tribune has been hit most often by the government’s anger. The weekly was seized twice during the past summer. Mohammed F. Ould Oumère, the newspaper’s editor, explained that the 23 August seizure of La Tribune was provoked by the publication of an editorial titled “A party to celebrate what?”, which dealt with the commemoration of the 10 July 1978 coup d’état. It was suggested in the piece that “the peace instituted by the military which came to power is more costly than war”, and that “the military’s results are negative at every level”. Moreover, that issue of the newspaper included a long report about the head of state’s travels within the country, in which journalists notably implied that the president was not interested in prayer, was taking up certain animist practices and allowed himself to be manipulated by his entourage.
