(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has welcomed the Abidjan authorities’ decision to allow three international radio stations – Radio France Internationale (RFI), the BBC and the pan-African station Africa No. 1 – to resume local retransmissions of their programmes on FM frequencies after a five-month interruption. The three international radio stations’ FM broadcasts were halted by the […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has welcomed the Abidjan authorities’ decision to allow three international radio stations – Radio France Internationale (RFI), the BBC and the pan-African station Africa No. 1 – to resume local retransmissions of their programmes on FM frequencies after a five-month interruption. The three international radio stations’ FM broadcasts were halted by the government on 19 September 2002. The organisation also urged the Marcoussis accords follow-up committee, which announced the decision on 28 February, to maintain pressure on the government.
“Restoring international radio stations’ broadcasts is an encouraging first step, but the move must not be used to cover up the almost daily press freedom violations in Côte d’Ivoire,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Albert Tévoedjrè, president of the Marcoussis accords follow-up committee.
As an example of the frequent press freedom violations, Ménard noted that on 1 March 2003, one day after the follow-up committee announced the decision concerning foreign radio broadcasts, a television crew from the French channel France 2 and several Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporters were insulted and manhandled by soldiers and civilians while trying to cover a press conference by President Laurent Gbagbo in Abidjan. Accused of being “enemies of Côte d’Ivoire” and of “selling out” the country, they were forced to leave the site of the press conference.
Ménard urged the committee to pursue its efforts and, in particular, “to do everything possible to obtain protection for journalists who request it and stop certain Ivorian newspapers from carrying messages of hate and xenophobia.”
Ménard also asked the follow-up committee to take up the case of Kloueu Gonzreu, the Agence Ivoirienne de Presse (AIP) news agency correspondent in Toulépleu (western Côte d’Ivoire), who was reported missing on 11 January after being detained that day by Liberian militiamen, according to his family (see IFEX alert of 12 February 2003). Several persons arrested at the same time were later found dead, including his 19-year-old son, Thierry Gonzreu.
