After 4 days in custody, the journalist of the private Senegalese channel Walf TV, Pape Ndiaye was imprisoned on March 7, because he was accused of 6 charges, including “spreading false news”. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) deplores this disproportionate decision regarding information given in good faith and calls for his release.
“Provocation of a crowd, contempt of court, intimidation and reprisals against a member of the judiciary, discrediting a judicial act, broadcasting false news, endangering the lives of others” are the charges against the journalist. According to his lawyer Maitre Moussa Sarr, contacted by RSF, Pape Ndiaye faces up to three years in jail for ” broadcasting false news”.
Originally, the journalist Pape Ndiaye said during the show “Petit-déj”, broadcasted on March 1, 2023, that deputies of the public prosecutor would have opposed the referral to the criminal chamber of the court of the trial of political opponent Ousmane Sonko prosecuted for presumed rape by a young woman. The Dakar prosecutor’s office, claiming that it was a false information, ordered that the journalist will be placed under a detention warrant. When contacted by RSF, Pierre Edouard Faye, the editor-in-chief of Walf TV, one of the country’s largest private press groups, said that Pape Ndiaye may have been mistaken, questioning the reliability of his source, rather than his professionalism.
“While there are mechanisms in place to correct erroneous information disseminated in good faith, the incarceration of Pape Ndiaye is totally disproportionate. With less than a year to go before the presidential elections, we are witnessing an escalation of attacks on media freedom in Senegal, which has long been considered as a democracy with a thriving press. We call on the authorities to immediately release Pape Ndiaye and decriminalize press offenses,” said Sadibou Marong, director of RSF’s Sub-Saharan Africa office.
Journalists and media in the sights of the authorities
Moreover, as the 2024 presidential elections approach, it’s been complicated for the media, notes RSF. Pape Ndiaye is the second journalist to be imprisoned in Senegal in less than four months and is one of the several journalists who have been under pressure for several weeks, illustrating a tightening of conditions in the profession.
On February 16, 2023, Sidya Badji, a photojournalist for the newspaper Sud Quotidien, who was covering demonstrations in the neighborhood of the opponent Ousmane Sonko, was arrested, checked, and had his equipment confiscated by the police, who accused him of having taken “compromising images” that he was forced to delete.
A week before this incident, Walf TV was suspended, for the second time in two years, for one week by the National Council for Audiovisual Regulation (CNRA). The broadcasting regulator said the channel had provided “irresponsible coverage” of the clashes that broke out between security forces and supporters of Ousmane Sonko, whose meeting in the town of Mbacké, about 200 km from Dakar, was banned. According to the CNRA, Walf TV “repeatedly broadcast images of violence involving teenagers, accompanied by dangerous language, including from the reporters. A disproportionate suspension decision that RSF denounced.
On November 5 2022, the journalist Fatou Dione of the news website Buur News was attacked by police while covering a forbidden demonstration. The next day, the journalist Pape Alé Niang, director of the news website Dakar Matin, was arrested, held in custody, charged and then placed under a detention order for having divulged information “of a nature to harm national defence”, for “concealing administrative and military documents”, and for having disseminated “false news of a nature to discredit public institutions”. After a short release, a return to prison, a hunger strike and a general mobilisation, including an appeal by 78 African journalists and press of freedom organisations gathered by RSF, he was released on 10 January 2023.
