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Reporters sans frontieres (RSF) protested on Monday against a three-month jail term for libel imposed on two Ivorian journalists and against the harassment of a journalist in Equatorial Guinea.
Meite Sindou and Patrice Lenonhin, managing editor and publisher respectively of ‘Le Patriote’, were sentenced in absentia on 8 May in connection with a report published in the opposition daily in June 2000. The offending article claimed that the president of Cote d’Ivoire’s human rights league had transferred the equivalent of about US $142,000 into a Swiss bank account.
RSF appealed to the minister of communication, Lia Bi Douyoua, to drop the penalties, which include a US $142-fine, because they were “disproportionate to the harm done”.
And, in a letter to Equatorial Guinea’s minister of the interior, RSF spoke out against the questioning of the president of the country’s press association, Pedro Nolasco Ndong, on his return on Sunday from Windhoek, Namibia. The organisation also demanded the restitution to Ndong of a situation report on the country’s press and the sum of US $100, which security forces took from him at the airport.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions