Government closes independent radio station

Police moved in on Wednesday and closed down independent Star Radio, but Liberia’s government has not given the broadcaster’s parent company, the Swiss NGO Fondation Hirondelle, the reasons for its action.

“We haven’t the slightest idea why,” an official at Hirondelle, who requested anonymity, told IRIN.

Hirondelle, based in the Swiss lakeside town of Lausanne, told IRIN it only learnt of the closure a few minutes after the police action on Wednesday morning.

However, citing a government statement read on President Charles Taylor’s Kiss FM radio, AFP reported that the closure was ordered because of a “security threat created by agents provocateurs using the news media to abuse the unprecedented freedom of speech and press now prevailing in the country”.

Star Radio, set up in 1997 in the run-up to elections that followed years of civil war, has had a troubled relationship with the Taylor government. The broadcaster’s shortwave frequency licence was withdrawn in October 1998 after the government closed its operations for 10 days. Last month the government said it would not renew the permit because with the elections over, Star no longer served its original purpose.

The radio is staffed by Liberian journalists but managed by Hirondelle with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the governments of Britain, The Netherlands and Sweden.

Hirondelle establishes radio stations in post-conflict countries.