(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Minister of the Interior Lamin Bajo, RSF protested the arrest of Babucar Gaye, the owner of private radio station Citizen FM. RSF urged the minister to do everything possible so that the journalist is released immediately. “Once again, Citizen FM is a victim of its independent stance,” stated Robert […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Minister of the Interior Lamin Bajo, RSF protested the arrest of Babucar Gaye, the owner of private radio station Citizen FM. RSF urged the minister to do everything possible so that the journalist is released immediately. “Once again, Citizen FM is a victim of its independent stance,” stated Robert Ménard, the organisation’s secretary-general. “Mr. Gaye is the second private radio station owner to be arrested in less than a week,” the secretary-general recalled.
According to information collected by RSF, Citizen FM interrupted its programming on the morning of 29 October 2001 to announce the arrest of the station’s owner, Gaye, by National Intelligence Agency (NIA) men. No explanation for the arrest was offered by the authorities. It appears that the arrest is linked to the radio station’s announcement of its intention to broadcast results from the 18 October presidential election as the votes come in. Acording to Gambian law, the electoral commission must be the first body to announce the election results to the public.
Citizen FM was suspended for close to two years, between August 1998 and July 2000, for “broadcasting false news.” At the time, several local journalists stated that the real motive behind the station’s closure was its broadcast of a daily press review (see IFEX alerts of 11 and 6 July 2000, 13 August, 22 and 17 June 1999, 19 May, 20 April, 3 March, 19, 13 and 9 February 1998). In an effort to reach illiterate people in the country’s interior, the station translated articles from English-language newspapers into local languages.
RSF also recalled that George Christensen, owner of the private radio station Radio 1, was arrested on 23 October and taken to the NIA’s offices. He was released after being interrogated about the radio station’s financial situation.
