By IPS Correspondents
DAKAR, Oct 9 2001 (IPS)

The Wal Fadjri media complex is up in the Sacre Coeur district of Dakar, a good 20 minutes drive from the city centre.

“Maybe we are too exposed out here, that’s why we got attacked”, says Sidy Lamine Niasse, President of the Wal Fadjri group, which includes a highly popular FM station and daily newspaper.

The journalists at Sacre Coeur have just been exposed to their first arson attack, although all were off the premises at the time.

According to security guards, two cars, one a taxi, one a private vehicle, approached the Wal Fadjri building at around 4.30 a.m. A group of men got out, advanced on the offices and poured a 20-litre can of kerosene. Only the prompt intervention of security guards prevented a highly destructive blaze.

Beyond blackened walls in the reception area and some damage to the ceiling, Wal Fadjri survived intact.

Niasse declines to speculate on who may have been responsible. “We’ve passed on details of the vehicles to the police and we’re leaving it to them to follow those leads”, he says.

Niasse sees the arson attack as an attack on press freedom per se, rather than on Wal Fadjri specifically.

“Senegal has a free press, because the Senegalese are a freedom-loving people. But unfortunately, there is a small minority which would like to see a more authoritarian system in place”, he says.

News of the attack in Sacre Coeur brought strong messages of support and condemnation from across the media. Rival daily, Le Matin, denounced the arson attempt as “a perverse form of censorship … flames to snuff out ideas”.

Politicians and diplomats visited Walf Fadjri to express sympathy and solidarity. But the paper was unimpressed by the lack of response from the government.

Writing in the Oct 4 edition of the paper, 48 hours after the attack, Editor-in-Chief Ousseynou Gueye expressed disappointment at the silence from the top, suggesting the government of President Abdoulaye Wade was hostile to Niasse’s critical stance on a number of key issues.

Senegal, located in West Africa, has a population of about eight million.

Excerpt: