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Cabinet Ministers in the All People’s Congress (APC)
led government have been
terrorizing journalists for the past one week.
A total of six journalists were arrested and
detained in police cells on the orders of the Minister of Lands, Allieu Pat-Sowe and the
Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security, Joseph Sam Sesay.
It all started on Monday 13th December
2010 when Minister Pat-Sowe ordered the arrest
and detention of four independent newspaper journalists. As if that was
the start of a war on journalists, Agriculture Minister Joseph Sam Sesay followed his colleague’s trend on
Thursday 16th December 2010
by ordering the arrest of two radio journalists in Bo, southern Sierra Leone.
The two staff of KISS FM Radio in Bo spent
the night in police cell after they were arrested at 8pm.
A press statement issued by the Sierra Leone
Association of Journalists (SLAJ) indicates that the radio staff were
beaten up and harassed by people who were part of the minister’s entourage for
stopping the minister’s radio discussion programme for an
earlier-paid-for one.
According to the SLAJ release, KISS FM Radio
Technician, Ibrahim Farmer, who was one of the
victims of the attack, told a news conference in Bo that he was slapped
by one Mr. Massaquoi, a member of the minister’s entourage, who
forced him to leave open the
microphone fader in the studio.
“A woman who was also a part of the minister’s entourage asked
me to sit on the floor but I
refused,” he is quoted as saying,
adding: “The armed police bodyguard assigned to the minister stood in the doorway and prevented me from
entering the studio once I had been forced out”.
“We were put under siege and even though not on
the minister’s
orders, he did not restrain them,” Farmer told the
SLAJ President in front of the
SLAJ Regional Executive and other members.
Continuity announcer, Mohamed Daramy also told the news conference that he was slapped by a tall member of the minister’s entourage whose name he does not know but whom he said he
can identify if he sees him. Daramy said they
later heard the minister calling the
Assistant Inspector General of Police for the Region, David Sesay, who went and arrested them himself and locked
them in a police cell.
The police never bothered to ask them a
single question or obtain statements from them that evening, the SLAJ
release revealed.
Minister Joseph Sam Sesay
had earlier said that he only requested police intervention so that the
journalists would be called in to make a statement. He alleged to have
paid for the air time which the journalists interrupted, but Station
Manager and Commercial Manager of the Radio have both denied receiving
any payment for the programme.
Station Manager, Samuel Haffner
said there was no record of payment for the said programme
and that the ministry of agriculture in fact owed his station eight
months in arrears for programmes aired. “They did not
pay a single cent for the programme” he said, adding that he had instituted an
investigation to ascertain how the minister’s programme happened in the first place.
“The actions of the agriculture minister and the
regional police boss are abhorrent and apprehensible. They constitute an
attack on the radio station, and are a clear breach of the fundamental
rights and freedom of the staff of the radio which any decent society
will investigate and punish the wrong-doers”, says SLAJ President Umaru Fofana.
© Copyright by Awareness Times Newspaper in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
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