Senegal’s private press united on Tuesday in a joint editorial denouncing the day-long closure of a radio network and a wave of arrests, saying ”the monster is still alive” and censorship had put press freedom at stake.
”The authorities have pushed their desire to control the press to a new level,” said the angry editorial published either in print or online by 18 newspapers in the West African country, signed by the chief editors concerned.
Police on Monday shut down the Dakar and main regional headquarters of Sud FM and arrested at least 18 of the Sud Communication group’s staff, after the privately owned national network broadcast an interview with a separatist leader.
Information Minister Bacar Dia lifted the ban late Monday and ordered the release of those detained and interrogated, stating the crackdown had been enforced to ”ensure state security”.
For private media owners and editors in Senegal, however, taking Sud FM off the air without explanation for hours and also seizing Monday’s issue of the group’s paper, Sud Quotidien, meant ”the monster is still alive” and took ”just a pretext to get at a media group that worries officials, today more than before.”
”Every attentive reader and listener noticed that the interview at issue was in no way a threat to social stability,” they declared in Tuesday’s thunderous editorial.
”The truth is that [President Abdoulaye Wade’s] liberal power, so good at clouding issues and so quick to invent excuses, was doing no more or less than experimenting with what we could call the steady preparation of a trap.”
The crackdown came after an interview Sud FM had broadcast early in the day with Salif Sadio, held to be head of the armed wing of the Casamance Movement of Democratic Forces (MFDC).
In the interview, Sadio described himself as the MFDC’s military chief of general staff and said: ”I’ll go home once we’ve chased Senegal out of Casamance. The simplest solution is that Senegal leaves.”
The MFDC has been active since the early 1980s in the southern Casamance province largely separated both geographically and ethnically from the rest of Senegal, but Sadio is today a hardline dissident, following an overall peace deal signed last December after a series of pacts.
Isolated attacks by Casamance rebels have occurred since the bulk of the MFDC opted for a political settlement, but these are considered the doing of splinter groups.
Angered editorialists argued that Sadio should be given freedom of expression like anyone else and noted that he had not called for general insurgency.
”We’ll fight to the last of our resources simply to retain the right to exercise our profession,” the editorial said.
”What’s at stake is the future of freedom of expression in this country… but also the future of the nation itself.”
The government daily, Le Soleil, defended the official crackdown, stating that the content of the Sadio interview ”was in manifest violation of legal and constitutional arrangements on territorial integrity, national unity and public order, since he raised ‘resorting to arms to throw out the Senegalese invader’.”
Local journalist Abdu Latif Coulibaly, author of a book critical of the regime, late on Monday said the government ”has an incredible sensitivity as far as Casamance is concerned”.
”Why not hand Salif Sadio a microphone even if one doesn’t share his ideas? It’s our job,” he added.
It was the first interview with Sadio for a decade and came after a swirl of rumours that he had been kidnapped by MFDC rebels. – AFP