Journalists seek decriminalisation of media-related offences

Journalists and editors of privately owned newspapers in the Central African Republic (CAR) have urged the government to review laws governing the media and to decriminalise offences committed in the course of their work. The journalists, drawn from four daily and four weekly newspapers, made the recommendation in the capital, Bangui, on Saturday at the end of a four-day media seminar organised by the UN Peace-building office in the CAR, known as BONUCA. Some 40 lawyers, journalists and other media workers attended the seminar. "A conscientious journalist is an important actor in the peace-building process," Lamine Cisse, the UN Secretary-General’s Representative in the country told the participants during the closing ceremony. He said privately owned newspapers had a vital role to play in "the return of social stability". Local media observers say there has been greater press freedom since former CAR army chief of staff Francois Bozize overthrew President Ange-Felix Patasse on 15 March. "The current administration’s will to guarantee press freedom is real," Mathurin Momet, director of Le Confident, one of Bangui’s daily newspapers, told IRIN on Sunday. He said that he could now write without worrying about harassment by the police. Momet was in prison during Bozize’s coup. He had been jailed over an article he had written about human rights violations by rebels from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who had come into the country in October 2002 to help Patasse subdue a rebellion by fighters loyal to Bozize. However, a publishing director of Le Quotidien de Bangui, Michel Ngbokpele, is still in jail. He began a six-month prison term in June for slandering a medical doctor and a magistrate in Mbaiki, 107 km south of Bangui.