Calls for more freedom of the airwaves as broadcasters held

Three journalists from an independent radio station in Ségou are still in detention ten days after being arrested, accused of defaming the local judiciary. The director of ‘Sido’ radio, Mamatou Traoré, his assistant Chérif Haidara and political analyst Katah Bah, were put in custody on October 24. Their arrests followed the station’s criticism of a court ruling made in Ségou against a village association which had been in dispute with the Agricultural Bank of Mali (BNDA). The court ruled that the association owed the bank CFA 4 million (US $7,000) and ordered the confiscation of 83 cows from the nearby village of Soroba. Sido took up the story, running interviews with disgruntled farmers and querying the court’s decision. Amadou Diarra, a lawyer representing both the village and the journalists said there had been an obvious abuse of justice "because you cannot impose a debt belonging to an association on a village". A senior legal official in Ségou, contacted by IRIN denounced what he described as "media harassment, injury and defamation" of lawyers and their families. The journalists’ case has been taken up Mali’s Higher Council of Communication (CSC). The CSC’s President, Moussa Keita, who said he had been in Ségou, outlining his concerns to the authorities, said the arrests represented "a serious abuse which signals a setback for press freedom in Mali", adding that the detainees had been penalised "for simply practising their profession". Reporters Without Borders (RSF) representative in Bamako, Belco Tamboura, who is also president of the Association of Editors from the Private Press (ASSEP), said: "What is happening is inadmissible….it is not normal to throw journalists in prison like that". Tamboura said RSF was preparing a formal reaction to the events in Ségou and would be taking the matter up at the highest level. Sido Radio is seen by some observers as close to the opposition Malian Party for Democracy and Independence (SADI). But others say it simply likes to keep the authorities on their toes. Malian media is often described as one of the most independent in West Africa, with state-owned radio and newspapers struggling to keep up with their private competitors. The rise in press freedom is traced back to the popular campaigns against then President Moussa Traoré, which culminated in Traoré’s overthrow in 1991. But critics say journalists are over-politicised and deal too much in polemics, depriving readers and listeners of valuable information and considered analysis.