(WAJA/IFEX) – The following is a 22 March 2003 WAJA statement: Police attack journalists in separate incidents Dakar, 22 March – The Senegalese Union of Media and Communications Professionals (Syndicat des Professionnels de l’Information et de la Communication du Sénégal, SYNPICS) and the West African Journalists Association (WAJA) have urged the Senegalese government to condemn […]
(WAJA/IFEX) – The following is a 22 March 2003 WAJA statement:
Police attack journalists in separate incidents
Dakar, 22 March – The Senegalese Union of Media and Communications Professionals (Syndicat des Professionnels de l’Information et de la Communication du Sénégal, SYNPICS) and the West African Journalists Association (WAJA) have urged the Senegalese government to condemn the recent acts of police brutality committed against several journalists and to carry out “actions with the aim of informing, educating, engaging and sensitising police officers to the significance of press freedom.”
In separate letters addressed to General Mamadou Niang, the interior minister, and Culture and Communications Minister Abdou Fall, SYNPICS and WAJA Secretary-General Alpha Sall underlined that “police officers have attacked journalists in three separate incidents over the past three months.”
On Thursday 20 March 2003, two journalists from Radio Manore FM (a community radio station for women), Fanta Badji and Mame Cira Konate, were physically assaulted by GMI (Groupement Mobile d’Intervention) riot police officers while covering a police operation involving the forcible removal of the inhabitants of an illegal settlement called “Terrain Foyer”, in Dakar. On 23 January 2003, Ibrahima Fall, a journalist with the daily newspaper l’INFO7, was beaten up by officers from the same riot squad while covering another police operation, this time involving the forcible removal of inhabitants from the Soumbédioune Artisans’ Village (Village Artisanal de Soumbédioune).
On 14 December 2002, Libasse Ndiaye, a cameraman from a television images agency, was attacked by police officers at the end of a demonstration organised by the Collective of Families of Victims of the “Le Joola” Shipwreck. Ndiaye was hospitalised after the police assault. Following the attack, SYNPICS lawyers filed a complaint with the state prosecutor. The legal action is currently with the courts.
“In light of the burgeoning number of intolerable actions in a country that describes itself as a democracy,” SYNPICS and WAJA “express their firm indignation and condemnation of these incidents.” The organisations “call on the government to distance itself from such conduct, condemn such practices, and carry out actions with the aim of informing, educating, engaging and sensitising police officers to the significance of press freedom.”
