Côte d’Ivoire strongman Laurent Gbagbo’s government on Tuesday blasted international media for false reporting, warning them not to aid “terrorists” in the country gripped by post-election violence.
A spokesperson for Gbagbo’s administration Ahoua Don Mello read a statement on state television RTI accusing international journalists of being “quick to voluntarily disseminate false information”.
He also denied the shelling of a market in the Abidjan suburb Abobo on March 17, a stronghold of internationally recognised president Alassane Ouattara.
The United Nations said the mortar attack by Gbagbo’s forces killed between 25 and 30 people, and may amount to a “crime against humanity”.
“The Western media raises the spectre of international prosecution by diffusing a continuous loop of news about non-existent mass graves, imaginary attacks and so-called genocide,” said Don Mello.
Media must ‘verify their facts’
He slammed international media for “on the other hand adopting an unjustified silence when crimes of an appalling atrocity are committed by the rebels”, referring to fighters backing Ouattara.
“Actions and murders committed by the rebels” in the west of the country “are not far from constituting, if not genocide, at least acts pertaining to it,” according to the spokesperson.
He said international journalists were thus contributing to the impunity of rebels and their accomplices, “who are quietly engaged in crimes against humanity”.
“The government of the Ivory Coast calls on international media to take elementary precautions to verify their facts before diffusing them and to demonstrate professionalism, that is to say objectivity and impartiality, to not become accomplices of terrorists, as the UN forces and [French forces] Licorne already are, at the risk of being considered from now on as the media extension of prevailing terrorism.”
A disputed election in November 2010 has led to a political crisis marked since mid-February by violent bloodshed, raising fears of civil war in the world’s top cocoa producer.
The UN estimates at least 440 people have been killed in the violence.
The New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists on Tuesday said reporting in the country “is more and more dangerous, journalists are facing a climate of fear, intimidation and attacks which have forced a number of them to choose between partisan reporting or seeking refuge in a safe place”. – AFP