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Reporters Without Borders
Press Release

5 December

SENEGAL

Call for measures to defuse tension in runup to 
elections, after threats against two journalists

Reporters Without Borders today condemned two 
separate cases of threats against Senegalese 
journalists in the past two weeks. The targets 
were freelance reporter Dié Maty Fall, who works 
for the privately-owned newspapers Sud Quotidien, 
Le Populaire and L'As and the websites Rewmi.com 
and Nettali.net, and Pape Alé Niang, who presents 
the press review on privately-owned radio Sud FM.

"Threats against journalists are always 
dangerous, regardless of their position, because 
journalists are often the first to fall victim to 
political hatred," the press freedom organisation 
said. "We call on the police to investigate these 
cases thoroughly in order to deter those who 
attack the media, to defuse tension and to calm 
people down in the runup to the elections."

Fall told Reporters Without Borders that her 
mother received three anonymous calls on 25 
November. The first caller, a woman, asked if 
"your daughter is at home." A subsequent caller 
said: "Tell your daughter to calm down, to stop 
poking her nose everywhere and to mind her own 
business (...) otherwise something terrible will 
happen to her."

Both Fall and her mother filed complaints 
"against persons unknown" at Dakar police 
headquarters.

The former head of political coverage at the 
state-owned daily Le Soleil, Fall condemned 
"threats and insults against independent 
journalists." Deploring the seriousness of some 
of the insults, especially racial ones, she said: 
"I have never been afraid of threats, but it 
worries me when they affect my family." She added 
that government members had tried to bribe her 
several times in the course of her career.

Niang said he was threatened by justice minister 
Cheikh Tidiane Sy at a meeting of the ruling 
Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) on 22 November 
that was attended by the president. He said Sy 
had called for him to be "given a hiding" because 
of his "disrespectful" press review.

-- 
Leonard VINCENT
Bureau Afrique / Africa desk
Reporters sans frontières / Reporters Without Borders
5, rue Geoffroy-Marie
75009 Paris, France
Tel : (33) 1 44 83 84 84
Fax : (33) 1 45 23 11 51
Email : [log in to unmask] / [log in to unmask]
Web : www.rsf.org

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