In Ivory Coast, shaken by an army mutiny, the official media are providing little hard news on the crisis, three foreign radio stations are cut, and the international press is described as an enemy.
No news is good news, it appears.
The uprising was quashed in Abidjan on September 19 at the cost of 270 dead and 300 wounded, according to an official tally. But the rebel soldiers also seized the west African nation’s second city, Bouake, in the centre, where they have since been fighting government troops, and Korhogo, the main town in the predominantly Muslim north.
The government of President Laurent Gbagbo described the uprising as an attempted coup backed by an unspecified ”rogue state” in the region which had sent in mercenaries with heavy weapons. On Wednesday, Notre Voie, the newspaper of Gbagbo’s ruling party, identified Blaise Compaore, president of neighbouring Burka Faso, as the ”mastermind” of the rebellion.
On the television news, the mood is patriotic, with the country under attack from the outside. It runs declarations that life is returning to normal, and quotes from contented Ivorians.
Missing are reports of the burning down of thousands of shacks in shanty towns inhabited largely by immigrants, many of them from Burkina Faso, and little is broadcast on the fighting in Bouake, where the rebels have managed to hold off the regular army for a week, or the situation on Korhogo, where sporadic shooting is apparently taking place from time to time.
On Tuesday, state radio allowed politicians known for their extremist views to call for a demonstration against France because its ambassador is sheltering opposition figure Alassouane Ouattara, a former prime minister, an arrangement that has the blessing of the government.
Several thousand demonstrators duly turned out Wednesday to chant in front of the French mission, some of them going on to the nearby Burkina Faso consulate, where they damaged the solid-metal entrance gate and the windows of a guard-post.
For the first three days of the crisis, everyone was listening to the BBC, Radio France Internationale (RFI) or Gabon-based Africa No 1.
The FM broadcasts of all three stations went off the air on Sunday, creating suspicion that the government had pulled the plug on them, especially as they had been giving air-time to rebel representatives in Bouake and Korhogo.
Acting Communications Minister Lia Bi Douayaoua said the same day that he had given no instructions to cut those transmissions, and said his technicians would check to see what the problem was.
”The government is acutely embarrassed,” he said. ”That sort of thing gives a terrible impression of Ivory Coast.”
On Wednesday, the three stations were still off the air.
The huge variety of newspapers available in Abidjan are back in the kiosks, each banner headline striving to outshine the competition.
They are feasting on the foreign plot theory, and some are turning against the foreign media.
”BBC, RFI, AFP, the other adversaries of Ivory Coast,” headlined Notre Voie, the newspaper of Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front, on Monday, accusing them of waging a disinformation campaign ”with the aim of weakening the government”.
”We see what the French journalists are writing, and it disquietens us,” Lucien Tape Koulou, the head of National newspaper, declared on state radio the following day.
His newspaper also on Tuesday, printed the headline: ”RFI, BBC, Africa No 1, AFP: the permanent danger” over a story which named several foreign correspondents as having chosen ”the aggressor’s side”.
On Wednesday, another newspaper described foreign correspondents as dancing vultures.
An innocent Spanish tourist strolling in Abidjan got the fright of his life on Monday when around 50 young Ivorians decided he was an RFI correspondent and came close to lynching him.
Two plain-clothes policemen saved his life, whisking him into a nearby police post, but several dozen of the mob followed them back and tried to push into the post.
Two newspapers have disappeared from the kiosks: Le Patriote and Le Liberal, both close to the party of Ouattara, who has accused the paramilitary gendarmerie police of trying to kill him on September 19.
The editor in chief of Le Patriote said they had decided to suspend publication after repeated telephone threats against their journalists, one of whom was beaten up. – Sapa-AFP