Press freedom 'elusive' in Africa
2005-05-03 13:55
Paris - Press freedom remained an unachieved goal in Africa in 2004, with independent journalists battling censorship, hate media and random violence, media watchdog group Reporters without Borders (RSF) said on Tuesday.
"Press freedom too often remains a frustrated hope in Africa. Journalists pay with their blood or their freedom for the despotism that continues in some countries," RSF said in its annual report released on World Press Freedom Day.
The Paris-based organisation singled out Eritrea and Zimbabwe as countries where press freedom is in a "very serious situation" - the worst grade on its worldwide index.
Rwanda, Ivory Coast and the DRC also came in for sharp criticism, along with Gambia, where local AFP correspondent Deida Hydara was killed by unidentified gunmen in December 2004.
RSF said the death of Hydara, who also worked for the organisation, stood as a chilling example of the random violence plaguing journalists in Africa, which it described as a "continent of death and despair".
Freedom of the press 'non-existent' in Zim
In Zimbabwe, "freedom of the press simply does not exist," RSF said, hitting out at the government of President Robert Mugabe for targeting the country's top circulation daily, The Daily News, and forcing foreign reporters to leave.
The Daily News, an independent daily known for its anti-government line, and its sister paper The Daily News on Sunday were closed down in September 2003 on charges that they violated the country's tough media laws.
But on March 14 of this year, Zimbabwe's Supreme Court set aside the government commission's decision to refuse to register the two newspapers.
"What was once the country's leading newspaper is now reduced to occupying one room" in the offices of its publishers, RSF lamented.
"Year on year, Zimbabwe has thus become a no-go area for free expression. Everything is under government control."
The group highlighted Eritrea as a "dismal exception" in Africa, saying the "youngest country on the continent is also its largest prison for journalists", with 14 reporters currently behind bars.
An iron fist over the media
The government of Eritrean President Isaias Afeworki maintains an iron fist over the media, forbidding the operations of all independent news organisations and booting out the last foreign correspondent in September 2004.
"The blackout appears to be here to stay" in Eritrea, the group warned.
RSF said the lack of free press also plagued Rwanda, where, 10 years after the genocide, President Paul Kagame's government "continues to behave like a predator", controlling broadcasts and harassing the sole independent paper.
It qualified the situation in Ivory Coast since the September 2002 armed uprising that split the country in two as "disastrous", with the rise of unreliable politically-biased dailies and hate media targeting foreigners.
"Hate and violence reign in Cote d'Ivoire. Even within the news media," it said. "Daily papers are political mouthpieces that clash with each other, denouncing and disparaging the other."
Reporters without Borders accused the Ivorian state media of disseminating "disinformation and rumour", especially about foreigners in the west African state, that encouraged a spate of street violence in November last year.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, it blew the whistle on physical and verbal threats against journalists, baseless libel suits and xenophobic views expressed in some media.
The DRC "continues to be one of those African countries where exercising the right to information can lead to prison, hospital and sometimes the cemetery," it said.
Sierra Leone took a hard hit for what RSF dubbed "one of the worst press freedom violations" of 2004 - the imprisonment of leading journalist Paul Kamara for four years on trumped-up libel charges.
But not all the news in Africa was bad last year. RSF gave high marks to South Africa, Namibia and Botswana for safeguarding press freedoms, and hailed improvements in Angola, Burundi and Liberia.