The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) calls on Senegalese authorities to stop the legal harassment of journalists and to deliver on President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye\u2019s promise to decriminalize press offenses.<\/p>\n
A Dakar court judge charged Zik FM editor-in-chief Simon Pierre Faye with spreading false news on April 14 and released him under judicial control.<\/p>\n
On the same day, the Dakar gendarmerie questioned for several hours online broadcaster Source A TV\u2019s journalists Omar Ndiaye and Fatima Coulibaly, and freelance news commentator Abdou Nguer, over their comments on the death of a local official. Nguer\u2019s lawyer told local media that the gendarmes detained the journalist on false news charges related to a TikTok post that does not belong to him.<\/p>\n
The post called for an autopsy of the official. Ndiaye and Coulibaly were released without charges.<\/p>\n
\u201cSenegalese authorities must drop all charges against journalist Simon Pierre Faye, release news commentator Abdou Nguer, and end their judicial harassment of journalists,\u201d said Moussa Ngom, CPJ\u2019s Francophone Africa Representative. \u201cAuthorities should instead focus their efforts on advancing promised reforms to decriminalize press offenses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police arrested Faye on April 10 for a post on his outlet\u2019s Facebook page, later deleted, republishing another article on the alleged distrust of President Faye\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n
Responding to a parliamentarian\u2019s question about Faye\u2019s detention, Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko said that \u201cpenal policy will now be zero tolerance\u201d for spreading \u201cfalse news.\u201d<\/p>\n
CPJ has documented detentions of Senegalese journalists on false news charges, an offense punishable by one to three years in prison. In his campaign, President Faye promised to replace imprisonment for press offenses with fines.<\/p>\n
Separately, on April 13, police and gendarmes stopped and questioned Al Jazeera Qatar journalist Nicolas Haque and his camera operator, Magali Rochat, upon their arrival in the southern Ziguinchor city, where they sought to report on the return of people displaced by the region\u2019s conflict. The journalists were sent back to Dakar the day after, Haque told CPJ.<\/p>\n
CPJ\u2019s email to the government\u2019s information and communications office was not answered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) calls on Senegalese authorities to stop the legal harassment of journalists and to deliver on President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye\u2019s promise to decriminalize press offenses. A Dakar court judge charged Zik FM editor-in-chief Simon Pierre Faye with spreading false news on April 14 and released him under judicial control. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"APA News","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,27],"tags":[3489,283],"class_list":["post-16057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-west-africa","tag-bassirou-faye","tag-senegal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}