NEWS
Authorities close radios, detain staff over interview of separatist leader
Source: IRIN NEWS




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October 17, 2005
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

DAKAR, 17 October (IRIN) - Senegal's leading private radio was closed down
for most of the day on Monday under special instructions from the Interior
Ministry after the station interviewed one of the leaders of a two-decade
separatist rebellion in the southern Casamance region of the country.

Employees from the main station in the capital Dakar and five other relay
stations across the country were brought in for questioning after
authorities stopped all Sud FM transmissions for 10 hours and seized the
media's daily "Sud Quotidien."

Police arrived at Sud FM stations across the nation within minutes of the
morning airing of an interview with Salif Sadio, leader of the armed wing
of the secessionist Democratic Forces Movement of Casamance (MFDC).

"The police arrived at around 9 o'clock and demanded we stop all
transmissions," said Seydou Nourou Gaye, head of Sud FM's relay station in
the main city of Casamance, Ziguinchor.

Gaye said the head of Sud FM's Ziguinchor bureau, Ibrahima Gassama, who
carried out the interview, had been detained for questioning.

In Dakar, Oumar Diouf Fall, who heads the Suf FM station in the capital,
said he had had no official notification, written or verbal, to explain
the government's response. "The chief commissioner of police here in Dakar
will not answer my questions," he told IRIN.
"Even the drivers and the cleaners were arrested," he said.

The fight goes on.
An armed separatist struggle for the lush Casamance region, which lies in
the far south of Senegal and is separated from most of the country by
Gambia, has rumbled on for 22 years. Since taking office in 2000,
Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade has worked hard to secure peace and a
deal was signed last December to end what has become a low-level conflict.
But hardliners within the MFDC refused to sign on.

Speaking on state radio, Interior Minister Ousamane Ngom said he had given
the order to shut down Sud FM transmission in the interests of "state
security".
Despite the recent peace accords signed by the MFDC with the Wade
government, Sadio used the 20-minute interview to call for a continuation
of the 22-year old independence struggle.

"I will only go home to my house once Senegal has been chased out of
Casamance," said Sadio in the weekend interview which was recorded at a
secret location.

For years, many Senegalese had thought Sadio dead, as he has not been seen
in public nor taken part in any of the recent peace negotiations.

But photographs of Sadio, flanked by armed fighters, were splashed across
the front pages of leading daily Sud Quotidien, adding to the media stir.

According to Sadio, a December 2004 peace deal between the MFDC and the
Senegalese government is null and void because it was not signed by the
"real" leaders of the MFDC.
Casamance: a taboo subject

This is not the first time that journalists have fallen foul of Senegalese
authorities for reporting on the Casamance rebellion.
In October 2003, Sophie Malibeaux the correspondent for Radio France
International (RFI), was forced to leave Senegal after conducting an
interview with a dissident member of the MFDC.

While Mamadou Diallo and Alioune Cisse, Senegalese journalists who work
for local newspapers Le Matin and Le Quotidien respectively, also got into
trouble with the authorities over Casamance.

"I was interrogated by the Department of Criminal Investigation (DIC) for
five hours in August 2000," Diallo told IRIN. "I had published an article
entitled 'The rebels circle Ziguinchor'," he said, explaining that the DIC
demanded he write a further article saying his original report was without
substance.

"I refused to write such a denial, and thanks to the intervention of some
members of civil society, I was not thrown out of the country," Diallo
said.

Cisse fell foul of the authorities only last year.

"On the 27 November 2004, I published an article on the trafficking in
arms between Russia and the Casamance, using Guinea Bissau as a transit
point," said Cisse. "I came to the attention of the chief judge in Dakar
who subsequently notified me that I was free to go but asked me not to
leave town."

In a statement entitled "End the attempted muzzling of the press" released
on Monday, Senegalse human rights group RADDHO condemned the closure of
the Sud FM stations

"The government of Senegal should guard against such acts which target
what are assets of democracy and are a fundamental freedom," Aboubakry
Mbodji, RADDHO's secretary for external relations told IRIN.

Sud FM was back on the air by 6 p.m. local time but it was unclear whether
all those arrested had been released without facing further charges.



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