By Lansana Fofana
CONAKRY, Jan 22 1998 (IPS)

Following a wave of deportations, raids on newspaper houses and detentions, journalists in the West African state of Guinea have accused the government of trying to muzzle the press.

“I think the government is trying to clamp down on vocal journalists in the run up to elections in December this year,” commented Abubacar Conde, editor in chief of ‘L’Independant’ weekly newspaper.

After a Dec. 26 raid on ‘L’Independant’s headquarters and printing press, a reporter working for the tabloid, Foday Fofana, was deported two weeks ago. Fofana, who is of Sierra Leonean origin, was kicked out after spending nearly three months in detention at the Camp Alpha Yayah Military base in Conakry.

A month earlier, an Ivorian-born editor of ‘L’Oeil’ newspaper was also deported after publishing a story that the authorities considered “dangerous to state security”.

The Paris-based Reporters without Borders (RSF) has written a protest letter to President Lansana Conte, condeming his administration for “muzzling the independent press by raiding offices and deporting journalists”.

The letter was published in this week’s edition of L’ Independant.

Journalists and human rights activists say that by turning up the heat on the independent press, the government is backtracking on the 1991 Media Act, which guarantees the freedom of the press.

Before 1991, both the electronic and print media were controlled by the government. ‘Horoya’ newspaper, which was the only one in circulation, was owned by the government and the radio and television were official mouthpieces.

However, while private media houses have been allowed to operate since then, the general climate of official hostility towards vocal journalists has not changed much.

“We have the laws of the land, such as libel, sedition and others. If journalists violate them, they will surely face the due process of the law,” explained an official in the Ministry of Territorial Security, who preferred not to be named. “Some of these papers published stories that threaten the security of the state, so they have to be contained.”

But the way in which the law is applied has journalists worried. Foday Fofana, for instance, spent more than two months in police custody, before being brought to court, given a brief trial and then deported. “We were stunned in the office when we heard that Foday had been deported to a country (Sierra Leone) which is already in crisis,” said Conde.

Political analyst Muhammed Camara believes the crackdown on the media is a pre-emptive move linked to the end-of-year election. “The independent papers do carry strong political commentaries that the government cannot put up with and, you know, elections are only eleven months away,” he told IPS.

In this week’s edition, the independent La Lance weekly drew the government’s attention to what it referred to as the “harassment of critical journalists”. The paper singled out Fofana’s case as a “clear manifestation of the authorities’ hostility to the private press”.

Individual media practitioners say the recent cases of official high-handedness augur ill for the near future. Ismail Doumbouya, for example, a reporter for an independent Conakry-based weekly, predicts more trouble for the press.

“The climate under which independent journalists here practice is hostile and I don’t see the government simmering down at all,” he explains. “In just over a month, two journalists have been expelled, two newspaper offices raided and printing materials confiscated by the police. We are in for bad times.”

Some journalists told IPS there were moves underway to set up an alternative press union that would question the excesses of the police and state security, unlike the Guinea Press Union, whose critics see it as largely impotent.

They also complained that state officials sometimes refused to talk to investigative journalists on matters of public interest, but once “disturbing” reports were published, the authors were quickly arrested. Last month, more than 50 independent journalists signed a protest letter calling for greater freedom for journalists and submitted it to the Prime Minister.

One opposition scribe attributed the state’s crackdown to governmental insecurity. “President Conte is fearing his shadow because his Unity and Progress Party (PUP) is going to loose the December race,” he charged.

Excerpt: