Journalist detained following rumours of a coup attempt

Authorities in Equatorial Guinea detained Rodrigo Angue Ngueme, correspondent for the French news agency, Agence France Presse (AFP) on Monday, two days after accusing foreign media of spreading false stories. Contacted by IRIN on Tuesday, the AFP bureau in the capital, Libreville said Angue Nguema’s wife had confirmed he was still in captivity and that there had been no statement from the Equato-Guinean authorities on the arrest. Last week, the government issued a strong statement denying rumours of a possible coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. In a statement broadcast on national television and radio on Saturday, government spokesman Antonio Fernando Nve Ngu, accused foreign agencies of spreading false stories, which were "the fruits of their imagination". Equatorial Guinea has worked to rebuild a heavily unfavourable image in recent years. Last month the United States reopened its embassy after an eight-year absence. The country has been strongly criticised for its handling of the media in the past. The international organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has documented a series of moves taken against individual journalists and organs of the press in recent years. In a letter to Equatorial Guinea’s President Tedoro Obiang Nguema in 2002, RSF Secretary-General Robert Menard told Nguema: "Your country is one of the most repressive in Africa when it comes to press freedom." Menard pointed to difficulties experienced by the independent Association of the Press of Equatorial Guinea (ASOPGE), the illegal monitoring of phone calls and the restrictions placed on electronic communication. The Special Rapporteur of the UN’s Commission on Human Rights, Ambeyi Ligabo, went on a special mission to Malabo in December 2002, assessing the human rights situation and the levels of press freedom. On his return to New York, Ligabo called for a "parallel improvement in the realisation of the whole spectrum of human rights" to accompany Equatorial Guinea’s oil-backed economic growth. A prominent independent journalist, Pedro Nolasco Ndong, editor of the weekly La Nacion, went into exile last year, complaining he had been threatened by the authorities.