Attacks on the Press in 2010 - Committee to Protect Journalists

<strong>Attacks</strong> on the Press in 2010forward with the document thought such language was dangerous for nationalunity,” Nimaga told CPJ. Mangou threatened to raid Le Patriote andtold the editors that he had “gone to war” against them. “It’s the last time Iwarn you,” the paper quoted him as saying.For now, governments seem more intent on shielding their actions thanaddressing domestic and international demands for transparency. Theirony is that secrecy is bound to fuel even more investigative reporting. Insome parts of the region, a “democracy deficit” contributes to governmentintransigence, said Mukelani Dimba, an analyst with the South AfricabasedOpen Democracy Advice Centre. In countries without effectiveopposition parties, he said, a critical press “assumes the posture of the opposition,or at least it is perceived as such.”The irony is that official secrecy fuelsinvestigative reporting.Local investigative reporting often focuses on basic governance such asthe delivery of public services and the use of public money. When the pressuncovers malfeasance, it’s a sensitive issue for governments dependent onforeign aid and investments. Recent revelations of corruption in Senegal,for example, caused the country to slip into the bottom half of TransparencyInternational’s annual Corruption Perception Index in just the pasttwo years.One of Senegal’s best-known journalists, Abdou Latif Coulibaly, editorof the private weekly La Gazette, was the target of two criminal prosecutionstriggered by investigative stories. After the government detained atop telecommunications regulator in March on charges of siphoning fundsfrom a licensing agreement, La Gazette published in May a series of storiesalleging that additional officials profited from the US$200 million deal. Anofficial named in the story, presidential adviser Thierno Ousmane Sy, soonfiled a criminal defamation complaint against La Gazette. Coulibaly andtwo colleagues were fined a total of 20 million CFA francs (US$39,000),although they appealed.Sy’s father, Justice Minister Cheikh Tidiane Sy, then brought additionalcriminal charges of “handling stolen administrative documents” againstCoulibaly in connection with a 2007 story about corruption in the nationallottery. Because similar charges against the journalist had already beendismissed in the lottery case, most observers saw the revived counts as22