IFJ Calls on Liberia to Drop Charges Against an Editor and Reopen a Newspaper --=========================================== The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today has vigorously condemned the arrest and imprisonment of an editor and the seizure of his newspaper in Liberia. According to the Press Union of Liberia (PUL), an IFJ affiliate, Front Page Africa Newspaper was found guilty in a libel suit involving the former Agriculture Minister Chris Toe and ordered to pay 1.5 million dollars US in damages. The editor Rodney Sieh has now spent his sixth night in jail after he was sent to the maximum prison on Wednesday, 21stAugust as he was “unable to pay” the amount. The newspaper was subsequently shut down on Friday, 23rd August. “Like our affiliate in Liberia, we believe that no justice is served if the courts are heavy-handed in their judgments regardless of the situation; therefore we call on the government to release editor Rodney Sieh from further detention and unlock the doors to his newspaper,” said Gabriel Baglo, IFJ Africa director. “Government must know that media have a very important role to play in the consolidation of democracy and the fight against corruption,” he added. The former Agriculture Minister Chris Toe went to court in 2010 with a US $ 2 million libel suit against Front Page Africa, Mr. Rodney Sieh the managing editor and reporter Samwar Fallah for a story thought to be based on corruption. Among other sources, the newspaper quoted an audit conducted by The General Auditing Commission on the Guthrie Rubber Plantation, which found Mr. Toe liable of wrongdoing, and recommended his prosecution. The Government is yet to act on the audit report. “Instead of having Mr. Toe minimally subjected to some kind of judicial inquiry on his stewardship at the ministry of Agriculture for which he was made to resign under questionable circumstances, it is a journalist who gets punished for calling public attention to the story,” says PUL President Peter Quaqua. He reminds the government that: “after acceding to the Table Mountain Declaration, our country must work to set a threshold for libel and contempt of court to restrain the arbitrary conduct of judges, whose judgments are largely influenced by power and money.” The IFJ joins its affiliate to be worried about the ease at which public officials are winning libel suits and the attending excessive fines against the media, which are basically intended to shut down the media and control them into submission. Reference is made to the $5 million rewarded to President Sirleaf as damages in a case with the New Broom Newspaper in 2010. That newspaper remains off the stand. Without doubts, the IFJ and PUL believe that nature of the court’s decision is simply a case to punish Rodney Sieh rather than repair the so-called damage suffered by Mr. Toe. The IFJ is very surprised that after having made lot of progress on press freedom since 2008, the government of Liberia is taking a step backwards. The IFJ recalls the arrest in 2009 of journalists Surinus Cephus, editor of the daily newspaper Plain Truth and Michael Makinde, director of Seamarco Printing Press. In November 2011 two radio stations Love FM and Kings FM were forced to cancel their broadcast programs after police walked into their stations and ordered the employees out. On March 2012, Mae Azango, a female reporter of Front Page Newspaper has been threatened for having published a story on practices of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Liberia. On May this year, journalists have issued a media blackout, by printing black front pages after a government official was accused of threatening them. Radio and TV stations were also protesting. Mr. Othello Warrick the Director of the Executive Protection Service (EPS) in Liberia on 3 May, during the World Press Freedom Day celebration, made disparaging and threatening remarks against journalists, describing media personnel as terrorists and threatened to move on them, if they question the integrity of the president of Liberia Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf The IFJ also encourages journalists who come in conflict with the law to submit to the legal process but the court systems must act withing the limits of the universal principles of human rights and press freedom. The Liberian government must take actions to demonstrate its commitment to safety and protection of the free press. Source:IFJ Africa .
Posted on: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 15:53:15 +0000
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