(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Minister of Defence Youba Sambou, RSF asked that all necessary measures be taken to ensure that police officers cease assaulting journalists from the private press, as occurred on 10 December 2001. “The police officers acted on the orders of the military authorities, who openly admitted to aiming to prevent […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Minister of Defence Youba Sambou, RSF asked that all necessary measures be taken to ensure that police officers cease assaulting journalists from the private press, as occurred on 10 December 2001. “The police officers acted on the orders of the military authorities, who openly admitted to aiming to prevent coverage of the demonstration in the local press. The military authorities carry the responsibility for these scandalous assaults,” stated Robert Ménard, the organisation’s secretary-general. “These methods are unacceptable in a state which is a pillar among francophone countries in the region,” he added.
According to information collected by RSF, Babacar Ndiaye, a journalist from the Agence de presse sénégalaise (APS), and another journalist by the name of Diatta, from the private radio station Sud-FM, were assaulted by police officers on 10 December. The journalists were covering a demonstration by former Senegalese peacekeepers with the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC), who were demanding their premium for two missions, in Thiès (seventy kilometres from Dakar) and close to Dakar. Police officers were ordered to prevent the press from attending the negotiations between demonstrators and senior officers.
Furthermore, RSF recalls that on 16 April, Moussa Diop, a correspondent in Vélingara (southern Senegal) from the private newspaper “Sud Quotidien”, was assaulted by Parti démocratique sénégalais (PDS) activists who are close to the city’s mayor, Bèye Baldé. The journalist was going to interview a local politician when about a dozen inidividuals blocked his path and began stoning him. The journalist had to take refuge in his car. All his car windows were broken and Diop’s back was hit by a rock before he managed to escape his attackers. When asked by the newspaper’s management to explain the attack, the mayor told them, “This journalist is against me.” On the same day, President Abdoulaye Wade, who was visiting the area, told a local PDS party official that he would pay for repairs to the journalist’s car (see IFEX alert of 19 April 2001).
