The Media Foundation for West Africa and its 15 Press Freedom Partners across West Africa have petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari over the killings of four journalists in separate incidents that occurred in Nigeria in 2017.
The four Nigerian journalists, Famous Giobaro, Lawrence Okojie, Ikechukwu Onubogu and Abdul Ganiyu Lawal, were all shot dead by unknown gunmen in the course of last year.
Giobaro was a desk editor with the state-owned Glory FM 97.1 in Bayelsa State, Okojie, worked with the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) in Edo State, Onubogu was a cameraman with Anambra Broadcasting Services (ABS) and Lawal was a freelance broadcast journalist in Ekiti State.
The petition, dated December 3, asked President Buhari to use his office to ensure the killings of the journalists in 2017 are resolved as impunity surrounding these killings tarnish the reputation of Nigeria as a democratic state and as safe place for journalists.
“The killings also call into question your government’s commitment to protecting press freedom in line with the UN Plan of Action for the safety of Journalists,” the petition read.
The petitioners urged the President to take urgent measures to ensure that the attacks against journalists are investigated and the perpetrators are brought to book.
The government in Togo has brutally enforced its ban on opposition demonstrations with a crackdown that has left at least two people dead.
After failing to convince the government to postpone legislative elections due on December 20, 2018, the opposition coalition organised its supporters for street protests in some of the major cities of the country on December 8, 2018. The coalition of 14 Togolese opposition parties maintain the necessary electoral reforms have not been adequately carried out.
The government, which announced a ban on all political demonstrations on December 5, 2018, responded to the defiance of the opposition with a heavy hand, as security forces used water cannons, tear gas, truncheons and live ammunition to disperse the thousands of demonstrators in Lome, Sokode, Bafilo in the central region, and Mango in the extreme north of the country.
The government confirmed on state television in the evening of December 8 that two people died in the demonstrations. Four policemen were also injured and 28 people arrested, according to the authorities.
The latest fatalities bring to eight the number of demonstrators killed in the crackdown on opposition demonstrations since 2017 when the opposition coalition began a series of street protests to demand political reforms.
Two people died on August 19, 2017, the first day of the serial protests. Four other protesters died on October 18 in another violent repression of the protests against the Gnassingbe dynasty which has ruled Togo for 50 years. President Faure Gnassingbe is in his 13th year in power, having taken over from his late father who had ruled for 38 years.
The MFWA condemns the killings and call on the government of Togo to call the security forces to order. We also appeal to both sides of the Togolese political divide to continue to dialogue in good faith to end the stalemate.
Today, December 13, 2018, marks exactly 20 years since Burkinabe journalist, Norbert Zongo was killed, and in what has been welcomed as a major step forward in the long struggle to secure justice for the slain journalist, a court in France Courts has authorised the extradition to Burkina Faso of the prime suspect to face trial.
The approval for the extradition of Francois Compaore, brother of former President Blaise Compaore, was given on December 5, 2018.
The ace investigative journalist was killed while he was out on the field investigating the circumstances surrounding the death in detention of Francois Compaore’s driver. His death sparked a wave of protests by the media and civil society groups demanding justice and denouncing the culture of impunity under the Compaore regime. The mass civil society mobilisation eventually led to a popular revolt in 2014 that ended Compaore’s 27-year dictatorship.
It will be recalled that the post-Compaore government in Burkina Faso issued an international arrest warrant against François Compaoré following investigations that reportedly linked him to the killing of journalist Zongo.
François Compaoré was arrested in October 2017 when he got off the plane at the Paris Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport in France. The Burkinabe authorities’ efforts to get him extradited met with the refusal of France whose laws forbid extradition of suspects to countries where they could face the death penalty.
Following assurances from the Burkinabe authorities that the country is far advanced in its efforts to scrap the death penalty, the extradition was approved.
This is an important step in the search for justice and the fight against crimes committed against journalists, which in most cases go unpunished.
This important court decision sends an unequivocal message and encouragement to human rights defenders and the press freedom activists. It represents a hope of justice for the relatives and families affected by these crimes.
“We heaved a sigh of relief,” says Robert Zongo, the murdered journalist’s brother.
This sigh of relief could not have come at a better time than on the 20th anniversary of Zongo’s killing. With this momentous decision, the sombre nature of the annual commemoration of this important date on the Burkinabe media calendar will hopefully give way to a more enthusiastic mood this time round.
MFWA welcomes the extradition approval and urge the French authorities to take steps to get Francois Compaore sent back to Burkina Faso to face trial. We wish the media fraternity in Burkina Faso a successful 20thanniversary commemoration of Norbert Zongo’s killing.
A Malian soldier and Secretary-General of the country’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (CVJR) has physically assaulted and forced a journalist to drink urine over the latter’s Facebook article questioning the impact of the Commission’s work.
Hamidou Toure El Hadji, the Managing Editor of the online news organisation, malimedias.com, was on November 29, 2018 summoned by Colonel Abdoulaye Makalou, the Secretary-General of the CVJR to his office.
Suspecting foul play, El Hadji Toure requested to meet the officer in an open place instead of his office. The journalist’s car however broke down mid-way on his trip to meet the Colonel. As Toure waited for the car to be fixed, the Colonel arrived and took him away to his office, together with a cousin who was accompanying him for security reasons.
According to media reports, the journalist was forced to drink his own urine after being pummeled to a pulp by the soldier’s bodyguards. Toure’s companion was also beaten in a separate room. Colonel Abdoulaye Makalou reportedly threatened Toure with death if he dared report his ordeal to anyone.
“Before releasing me, the Colonel threatened me with death if I spoke about what had happened to anyone,” Toure told local media.
Meanwhile, the journalist has lodged a complaint against the Colonel with the Gendarmerie, the military unit to which Colonel Makalou belongs.
The MFWA condemns this vicious attack on the journalist for merely exercising his civic right to raise issues about the work of a public Commission. We call on the Gendarmerie in Mali to sanction Colonel Makalou. We also urge the victims to lodge a formal complaint with the police.
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has called on governments in Africa to protect journalists who work online alongside those who work offline within the broader effort to promote the safety of journalists.
The MFWA made the call during the Interregional Forum on Strengthening National Monitoring and Reporting Mechanisms on Safety of Journalists in Africa which was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on November 26-27, 2018.
“Online journalism has become an important component of the media industry with peculiar challenges regarding the safety and security of the journalists working in that space. These challenges include trolling, hacking of accounts and stalking of journalists,” Muheeb Saeed, MFWA’s Programme Officer for Freedom of Expression, observed.
“It is important that mechanisms for the protection of journalists take into account the technical nature of the threats online so as to incorporate cyber security expertise to help investigate and prosecute crimes against journalists online,” Saeed added.
The National Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism for the Safety of Journalists is a multi-stakeholder approach to the prevention and punishment of attacks on journalists, and for their protection in the face of threats. It involves the development and implementation of nationally-owned protection mechanisms for preventing and penalising attacks against journalists.
Another key function of the Mechanism is the monitoring and reporting of violations in line with the UN Plan of Action for the safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity.
Held under the aegis of UNESCO, the Forum was attended by delegates from about 40 countries in Africa drawn from regulatory bodies, security services, civil society organisations and senior government officials.
The Forum reviewed the progress made by the various African countries since the adoption of the Addis Ababa Resolution on the Creation of an AU Working group on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity on November 15, 2017.
The MFWA underlined the need to adopt the right approach to tackling the peculiar emerging threats to online journalists and bloggers, particularly, women.
The Forum also agreed to establish an African framework for monitoring attacks against journalists and issuing an annual Africa Press Freedom Index based on monitoring reports submitted by the National Mechanisms of the various countries. This, they agreed, would help eliminate reservations about press freedom reports issued by external organisations.
The MFWA delegation also included Vivian Affoah, Senior Programme Officer for Freedom of Expression, and Felicia Fauzia Anthonio, Programme Associate in Charge of the Africa Freedom of expression Exchange (AFEX).
In what confirms a culture of intolerance for demonstrations, security forces continue to unleash mayhem on demonstrators, with a total of 32 citizens and activists assaulted or detained during the third quarter of the MFWA’s monitoring of freedom of expression rights in West Africa.
The Media Foundation for West Africa’s monitoring of the freedom of expression landscape in July-September 2018 recorded 35 violations against a total of 63 identifiable victims including journalists and media houses.
Two demonstrators were killed in Guinea while others were sentenced in Niger. Civil society activists embarking on demonstrations were arrested in Sierra Leone and Togo.
The incidents follow similar trends in the region where 22 demonstrators have been killed and several others injured, arrested and detained over the past two years.
The attacks on peaceful demonstrators, some fatal, are in breach of the fundamental human rights to free expression including peaceful assembly and demonstrations. These rights are enshrined in the national constitutions of all the countries concerned as well as various international human rights protocols, thus calling into question the commitment of the governments to these legal instruments.
Details of these violations and others can be found in the July-September 2018 edition of MFWA’s West Africa Freedom of Expression Monitor.
In what confirms a culture of intolerance for demonstrations, security forces continue to unleash mayhem on demonstrators, with a total of 32 citizens and activists assaulted or detained during the third quarter of the MFWA’s monitoring of freedom of expression rights in West Africa.
The Media Foundation for West Africa’s monitoring of the freedom of expression landscape in July-September 2018 recorded 35 violations against a total of 63 identifiable victims including journalists and media houses.
Two demonstrators were killed in Guinea while others were sentenced in Niger. Civil society activists embarking on demonstrations were arrested in Sierra Leone and Togo.
The incidents follow similar trends in West Africa Freedom that have seen 22 demonstrators killed and several others injured, arrested and detained over the past two years.
The attacks on peaceful demonstrators, some fatal, are in breach of the fundamental human rights to free expression including peaceful assembly and demonstrations. These rights are enshrined in the national constitutions of all the countries concerned as well as various international human rights protocols, thus calling into question the commitment of the these governments of these legal instruments.
Details of these violations and others can be found in the July-September 2018 edition of MFWA’s West Africa Freedom of Expression Monitor.
Security forces in Mali have violently dispersed and attacked a group of opposition party supporters who were demonstrating in the capital, Bamako.
The opposition organised the march on November 16, 2018 to protest against what they considered as poor governance, high cost of living and the planned extension of the mandate of the deputies to the National Assembly. The governor of Bamako had, however, banned the demonstration over security concerns.
“The country is going through a fragile situation,” read a release issued by the governor ahead of the march.
No sooner had the thousands of people gathered at Bourse de Travail, the venue of the demonstration, than the security forces pounced on them, firing tear gas. The violent intervention saw several demonstrators injured, including a member of parliament, Amadou Araba Doumbia.
“To demonstrate in Mali, we do not need permission, but just to inform the authorities to supervise the event,” a statement by the participating opposition parties said.
The statement signed by Soumaila Cise, the leader of the main opposition party, also condemned the violent repression by the police.
“We condemn with the last energy the barbaric repression planned by the highest officials of the regime,” the statement added.
The MFWA also condemns the prohibition of the march as a violation of a fundamental right conferred by the constitution of Mali and the many regional and international protocols the country has ratified on civil and political rights.
The MFWA appeals to Mali’s authorities to desist from using insubstantial excuses to curtail the enjoyment of the rights to peaceful demonstrations and from unleashing violence on demonstrators.
In a space of 10 months – January to October 2018 – dozens of people had been killed and over a 100 others injured by speeding vehicles on a seven-kilometre highway within the Ghanaian capital, Accra. People living within the stretch of the highway say 195 pedestrians had been hit and killed by motorists within the 10-month period. This translates into almost 20 deaths per month on that short stretch of road.
The Ghana police disputes the casualty figures put out by the citizens. The police say in their records there had been 24 deaths and 166 injuries instead. But even if the figures by the police were to be the accurate one, that translates into an average of over two deaths and 16 injuries each month.
The cause of the carnage on the seven-kilometre highway was, in summary, that: literally nothing was in place to improve pedestrian safety on the highway – no road markings for pedestrian crossing, traffic signal lights had been out of use for months and street lights on the highway had been off for months.
Above all, six separate pedestrian foot bridges that were to be constructed at different spots to aid pedestrians to safely cross the multiple-lane highway had all been left undone or abandoned midway into construction.
One of the abandoned footbridges on the highway
Citizens living in communities along the highway, especially those living in the densely-populated suburbs of Madina and Adenta, kept complaining and making demands for the authorities to fix the problem. Local media actively campaigned and highlighted the problem on daily basis. The campaigns got government officials to always respond. But the response from officials had been more of complaints to justify why the government could not be blamed for the problem and the carnage.
“Funds are not readily available to pay contractors to fix the problem. The previous government left the economy in a mess, the previous government failed to pay the contractors to complete the project properly, government is working hard to fix the problem soon, plans are far advanced to fix the problem,” officials of the 22-month old Ghanaian government kept complaining while lives were still being lost and limbs being broken on daily basis.
The same government had, meanwhile, had the resources to finance and sustain an expensive executive bureaucratic structure of 110 ministers with quite a number of them manning duplicative ministries, and over 900 presidential staffers.
The back-and-forth complaints between citizens and government continued and so was the killings and maiming on the highway. But all was to come to an end on Thursday November 8 when there was another casualty. At about 4PM local time on this day, a first-year female high school student was hit and killed instantly by a taxi cab. She was the sixth student of the West Africa Secondary School, which is by the highway, to have been killed within the ten-month period.
The death of the student prompted residents along the highway to move beyond complaining and go into action to insist on their right to access public goods and services and the government’s responsibility to deliver those services. In what was clearly a spontaneous action, community members massed up on the highway and completely blocked it. The result was massive vehicular traffic at a rush hour.
The demand of the citizenry was brief: the problems with the road that have caused the casualties must be fixed immediately. Expectedly, the police moved in with loud sirens, well-built men fully dressed and armed with varied riot control weapons. But the anger of the people appeared more powerful and fearful than any of the varied riot control weapons the police could deploy.
After hours of stand-off between the police and the angry citizens, the road was finally cleared but not until the citizens had sent a strong signal of what they could do should the problem not be fixed immediately.
When the citizens finally decided to move beyond words in asserting their fundamental right to access public goods and services, the government was compelled to do same – to act and not complain. The government suddenly ceased complaining about lack of resources and moved into action.
On the same day, November 8, a high level Inter-Ministerial Committee made of the ministries of roads, transport and interior was constituted by the government. On the night of the same day, the inter-ministerial committee issued a statement announcing that work on the highway “is to be done on an accelerated basis with multiple contractors to ensure quick completion.”
The statement, which was jointly signed by the ministers for roads and interior, further announced that:
“Personnel of the Motor Transport and Traffic Department of the Ghana Police Service have been deployed to enforce the relevant road traffic regulations on speeding limits, jaywalking and pedestrian crossing. Traffic signal lights and street lighting would be fixed to improve visibility on the corridor.”
By the next day, November 9, the road traffic signal lights that had been non-functional for months had been fixed. The non-functioning street lights were back on to light-up the highway, and police had been deployed to ensure compliance with traffic regulations.
The highway beaming with streetlights a day after the demonstration
“Each contractor will tackle one footbridge because time is of the essence now,” the Minister for Roads, Kwasi Amoako-Atta, announced.
But on November 7 – a day before the death of the student and the citizens’ action – the roads minister had said on public radio that he did not have much information on the crisis on the highway. He could not also confirm when he expected the footbridges to be fixed. This was despite months of public agitations and media campaigns about the situation.
Also, senior official at the Ghana Highway Authority, the body in charge of highways, had, on November 5, indicated that the footbridges were actually going to be completed by the end of 2019.
This development certainly affirms the need for citizens to be empowered to always assert their right to access public goods and services while demanding accountability from duty-bearers. If the affected citizens had continued with their complaints, the government would have still been complaining with excuses. Indeed, power belongs to the people!
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has learned with disappointment the revocation of the accreditation of Radio France Internationale’s (RFI) Guinea correspondent, Mouctar Bah.
The decision taken by the media regulatory body, Haute Autorité de la Communication (HAC), on November 14, 2018 followed Bah’s report on a recent crackdown on the demonstrations by security forces that resulted in the killing of two demonstrators and a police officer.
According to our correspondent in Guinea, Mouctar was summoned on November 12 to Haute Autorite de la Communication( HAC) following a complaint lodged against him by the Minister of Information and Communication, Amara Somparé. He is accused of having made an unbalanced coverage of the demonstrations, especially about the deaths recorded on 7th and 8th November, 2018.
According to a statement issued by the HAC on November 14, 2018, the journalist was ordered to provide an opportunity to the Ministry of Defense to make a rejoinder to the story before adding that Bah’s accreditation to report in the country has been revoked following his inability to justify his report.
“No application for a new accreditation can be considered before the end of February 2019,” the statement concluded.
However, the management of RFI have contested the decision and rejected the HAC’s account of the incident. In a statement, the management said that Bah sought unsuccessfully to reach the authorities for their version of the incidents, adding that their journalist never failed to justify his story.
The MFWA finds the sanction of the HAC unjustified, and considers it rather as an attempt to censor reportage on the increasing fatalities from the recent wave of demonstrations in the country. The HAC’s decision to close the door to a fresh application for accreditation until the end of February is a denial of the right of appeal. MFWA urges the HAC to stand by the media rather than help mussel it.
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) will convene a special experience-sharing forum for twenty (20) Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) across the country on Tuesday, November 20, 2018 at the Swiss Spirit Alisa Hotel.
The one-day forum will also bring together representatives from the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, the Local Government Services Secretariat and the Institute of Local Government Studies to deliberate on key local governance issues aimed at improving citizens’ access to information.
Functional local government system thrives in the setting where authorities are accountable, transparent and responsive while citizens are informed and take active participation in decision making.
The forum will provide an opportunity for participants to share knowledge on communication and public outreach efforts aimed at promoting citizen’s engagement in local governance.
The Experience-Sharing forum forms part of a project being implemented by the MFWA in collaboration with DW Akademie aimed at increasing citizens’ access to information, and encouraging citizen participation in development issues in selected Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).
The brutal crackdown on demonstrations in Guinea has intensified with police fatally shooting two people amidst heightened political and social agitations.
Alimou Diallo and Mamadou Bela Baldé, aged 26 and 30 respectively, died on November 7 from bullet wounds as the protestors tried to defy a government ban to embark on a demonstration on November 8, 2018.
On the same day, a police officer, Brigadier-in-Chief Bakary Camara, was assaulted physically by the angry demonstrators. He also died on November 8 as result of the attack.
The opposition led by Cellou Dalein Diallo, President of the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG), had called for a stay-at-home protest on November 7 and a street demonstration on November 8 to protest against the government’s violation of agreements on the installation of elected local and communal councils. The accord was reached to end disputes arising out of the local elections of February 4.
The government responded to the opposition defiance by unleashing the police on the protestors leading to the death of the two people. The latest incident brings to five the number of protestors killed by security forces in Guinea in two months.
On 30 October, one person was shot dead as the police tried to quell a similar protest. Earlier on September 5, two people were killed by police during demonstrations in the cities of Boke and Kamsar over cuts in power and water supply.
MFWA expresses its deep concern over the escalating use of violence by Guinea’s security forces against peaceful demonstrators in the country.
The MFWA urges the authorities to investigate these incidents of deaths during crowd control by the security forces and to punish the perpetrators of such abuses against the civilian population. We also call on the authorities and organisers of demonstrations to observe discipline and respect the rights of other citizens avoid any excesses.
