(IFJ/IFEX) – The following is a 30 April 2002 IFJ press release: Journalists condemn arbitrary arrests in Mauritania The International Federation of Journalists, the world’s largest journalists’ organisation, condemns Mohamed Fall Ould Oumère’s arbitrary arrest. The publication director of the weekly La Tribune was arrested on 12 April. Accused by the Mauritanian government of covering […]
(IFJ/IFEX) – The following is a 30 April 2002 IFJ press release:
Journalists condemn arbitrary arrests in Mauritania
The International Federation of Journalists, the world’s largest journalists’ organisation, condemns Mohamed Fall Ould Oumère’s arbitrary arrest. The publication director of the weekly La Tribune was arrested on 12 April.
Accused by the Mauritanian government of covering the congress of the underground Mauritanian organisation “Conscience and Resistance”, the journalist was held for nearly one week in the offices of the State Security Services. He was detained with a businessman and a Franco-Mauritanian professor. The three men were then released without trial.
“This infringement on press freedom and the right to inform is contrary to basic human rights principles,” stated Mahmoun Faye, who is in charge of the IFJ’s regional bureau in Africa. “It constitutes an indisputable obstacle to the development of a free and independent press in Mauritania,” he added.
The IFJ believes that Mauritanian journalists should be able to work in a legal and professional environment that allows them to freely exercise their profession without fear of arrest or imprisonment. The organisation calls on the Mauritanian authorities to end such attacks on freedom of expression.
The IFJ is the world’s largest journalists’ organisation, with 500,000 members in 103 countries.
