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Gabon: 'Politicised' Media Regulator Suspends Two Newspapers
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Reporters sans Frontières (Paris)
PRESS RELEASE
9 October 2007
Posted to the web 9 October 2007
Reporters Without Borders condemns the increasingly politicised decisions of Gabon's media regulatory authority, the National Council of Communication (CNC), which has just suspended two privately-owned fortnightlies, one for a month and the other "until its legal status has been sorted out."
The CNC announced yesterday that, in response to a complaint by arts and culture minister Blandine Marundu ma Mihindou, La Nation was being suspended for a month for "lapsing into libel, insults and defamation." Issue No. 98 in August accused the minister of "inaction" and "lack of experience." The CNC claimed that La Nation was given a prior warning.
The other newspaper to be banned is Le Gri-Gri International, a pan-African satirical fortnightly produced in Paris. The CNC said that, as it had started to bring out a Gabon edition that is entirely produced and printed in Libreville, it could no longer be regarded as a foreign publication and had failed to comply with the requirements of a Gabonese publication subject to Gabonese law.
The company that has been printing Le Gri-Gri International's Gabon edition, La Voix du peuple, refused to print an issue last month for "reasons related to its content." The issue had a cover story that accused the government of deceiving the public about its plan for iron ore mining in Belinga, and warned of its environmental dangers.
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