A statement of the WAEF (West African Editors Forum)/FORMAO (Forum des Responsables des Médias d’Afrique de l’Ouest), distributed by The African Editors' Forum (TAEF) and the SA National Editors' Forum:

The Forum des Responsables des Médias d’Afrique de l’Ouest has just learned with consternation that on Thursday October 22, 2009, a group of young people, claiming and wearing tee-shirts with the logo of  l'Union national estudiantine et scolaire de  Côte d'Ivoire (UNESCI), invested the buildings of the press group "Le Réveil".

With the pretext of a right to reply that they would have come to deposit, they attacked the personnel, wounded several people, ransacked the offices and destroyed several materials of the group.

At the beginning of the end of the political crisis in Côte d'Ivoire which should result in a free election, transparent and peaceful, the FORMAO is astonished and worried about these backward practices and is concerned with this prehistorical attitude of the freedom of expression and the press.

The FORMAO which gathers the editors and diffuser of sixteen States (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo), cannot remain indifferent in front of this serious attack to the freedom of expression and  press.

The FORMAO denounces these practices which are antinomy with the democratic and republican values.

The FORMAO stands up against orchestrated repression vis-à-vis of the journalists and the newspapers, guilty of practicing freely and without constraint their profession.

The FORMAO considers that the effective promotion and the protection of the rights of the people who exert in the media are of a fundamental importance for the safeguard of peace, the exit of crisis and human dignity.

Thus, the FORMAO requests the government of the Ivory Coast:
* to use its diligent republican obligation so that this hooliganism which was expressed against the press group "Le Réveil" does not remain unpunished;
* to take all security measurements so that such acts do not reproduce any more.

The FORMAO reaffirms its solidarity and its support and its encouragements to its colleague DENIS ZION KAH, general manager of the press group "Le Réveil" and all his staff.

Cheriff M. SY, Coordinator of the FORMAO, Vice President of TAEF