(MISA/IFEX) – On 19 January 1999, the editor of “MoAfrika” newspaper, Candi Ramainoane, was denied access to a court martial case in which fifty Lesotho Defence Force (LDF) soldiers are being tried for mutiny. Ramainoane told the Media Institute of Lesotho (MILES) that at about 9 a.m. (local time), the time when journalists are permitted […]
(MISA/IFEX) – On 19 January 1999, the editor of “MoAfrika” newspaper, Candi
Ramainoane, was denied access to a court martial case in which fifty Lesotho
Defence Force (LDF) soldiers are being tried for mutiny.
Ramainoane told the Media Institute of Lesotho (MILES) that at about 9 a.m.
(local time), the time when journalists are permitted to enter the court
martial, he approached the entrance and was immediately halted by a Military
Police (MP) officer. When he asked why he was being denied entrance, he was
told that “orders are that you are not to be allowed in” and he was further
ordered to stand to the side. The court martial is being conducted at the
maximum security prison in the capital, Maseru.
Ramainoane reports: “All hell broke loose when I began to interview people
as they stood outside the entrance prison grounds. One MP Liaison Officer
ordered me to move away and I refused. Then he threatened to beat me up and
I said I would still not move.”
After refusing to identify himself to Ramainoane and to say who gave orders
that he should not be allowed into the court martial, the MP left him alone.
However, Lt. Tanki Mothae, public relations officer for the LDF, later
confirmed to MILES that the order barring Ramainoane from the court martial
had been issued by him. He said Ramainoane had broken rules regulating court
martial proceedings by interviewing some of the accused soldiers.
Ramainoane countered by saying that he had not been informed or warned that
he had broken such rules, instead he had been pushed and threatened with
assault by those at the entrance.
Mothae said that it would have been an “unlawful act for a member of the LDF
to physically abuse a civilian and it would have been clumsier still if that
civilian were a journalist.” He further said that Ramainoane would again be
allowed to report on the court proceeding if he “gave assurance that he
would refrain from interviewing the accused.”
Ramainoane told MILES that he felt he was being singled out because he
reported negatively about the LDF’s high command, the irregular manner in
which the court martial was being conducted, and the irregularity of the
case actually being tried in a prison ground. He also said that he had been
made privy to a plan to murder the arrested soldiers on Monday, 18 January,
and had subsequently broadcast this information on MoAfrika FM radio
station.
