(WAN/IFEX) – The following is a WAN press release: Paris, 4 July 2001 For immediate release WAN Meets Togolese Prime Minister, Calls for Journalist’s Release A delegation from the World Association of Newspapers has met with the Togolese Prime Minister, Agbeyome Kodjo, in Lomé to urge him to release imprisoned journalist Lucien Messan, the most […]
(WAN/IFEX) – The following is a WAN press release:
Paris, 4 July 2001
For immediate release
WAN Meets Togolese Prime Minister, Calls for Journalist’s Release
A delegation from the World Association of Newspapers has met with the Togolese Prime Minister, Agbeyome Kodjo, in Lomé to urge him to release imprisoned journalist Lucien Messan, the most senior figure in the Togolese independent press.
The delegation, which included senior staff of the Paris-based WAN and leading publishers and editors from west Africa, met with the Prime Minister on Monday (2 July). In addition to calling for Mr Messan’s release, the delegation condemned the police seizure of Monday’s edition of Mr Messan’s newspaper, Le Combat du Peuple, hours before the meeting.
After meeting with the Prime Minister and Interior Minister General Sizing Walla, the delegation was allowed to meet Mr Messan in prison. He was in good condition but said he had been allowed very limited contact with anyone outside the prison.
“While the Prime Minister stressed he could make no promises, he gave us some hope that the situation could improve,” said Aralynn McMane, Director of Development and Educational Programmes for WAN and a member of the delegation. “However, the meeting with the Interior Minister - who insisted that the conviction and the seizure of the newspaper were justified - left us feeling less positive. We will continue to press for Mr Messan’s release.”
The jailing of Mr Messan, a critic of President Gnassingbé Eyadéma’s regime, is seen as part of a larger campaign to silence the independent press.
The delegation also called on authorities to withdraw threats of arrest facing Apollinaire Méwénemessé, the Director of the Togo Media Observatory and Publisher of the weekly La Dépêche, and to cease harassing the west African nation’s independent press.
Mr Messan, 55, the editorial director of Le Combat du Peuple, was sentenced on June 5 to 18 months in prison with six months suspended for “falsehood and the use of falsehood”.
According to reports, Mr Messan was charged in connection with a press release he had signed from the Togolese Private Press Editors Association concerning alleged extra-judicial killings in Togo in June 1998.
Members of the delegation were: Dr. McMane; Kajsa Törnroth, Coordinator of The WAN African Press Network for the 21st Century; Abdourahmane Camara, Publisher of Walf Adjiri, Senegal; Arona Kante, Chief Editor of Le Cafard Libéré, Senegal; Oumarou Keita, Chief Editor of Le Républicain, Niger; and Mahamane Hamèye Cissé, Publisher of Le Scorpion, Mali.
The WAN delegation was representing 42 participants in a newspaper management seminar that was held in neighbouring Benin last week.
WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, defends and promotes press freedom world-wide. It represents 17,000 newspapers; its membership includes 67 national newspaper associations, individual newspaper executives in 93 countries, 17 news agencies and eight regional and world-wide press groups.
