Portugal’s government on Friday condemned the expulsion of reporting teams of state news agency Lusa and two African units of broadcaster RTP from Guinea-Bissau in the run-up to a postponed election scheduled to be held in November in the West African country.<\/p>\n
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement it had “immediately summoned the ambassador of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau in Lisbon for explanations and clarifications” for a meeting that will take place on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“The Portuguese government strongly condemns the decision of the government of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau to order the removal of Lusa, RTP Africa, and RDP Africa from that country and their respective termination of broadcasts,” it said, calling the move “highly reprehensible and unjustifiable”.<\/p>\n
No explanations for the move were provided by either Guinea-Bissau, which announced the expulsion in a government decree earlier on Friday, or Portugal. The representatives of the media outlets have until August 19 to leave the country.<\/p>\n
Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embalo said in March he would\u00a0run for a second term, backtracking on earlier promises to step down and stoking tensions over postponed elections, with his opponents saying that his term expired in February.<\/p>\n
A dispute over when Embalo’s presidential term, which began in 2020, should end has heightened tensions that risk unrest in the former Portuguese colony with a history of military coups.<\/p>\n
On August 7, Embalo, a former army general, appointed by decree a new prime minister, Braima Camara – the third premier since Embalo took office in 2020 – replacing Rui Duarte de Barros.<\/p>\n
In March, a\u00a0political mission\u00a0of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), deployed to help reach a consensus on how to conduct the election, said it had to leave “following threats by H.E. Umaro Sissoco Embalo to expel it”.<\/p>\n
The presidential and legislative elections are scheduled to be held on November 23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Portugal’s government on Friday condemned the expulsion of reporting teams of state news agency Lusa and two African units of broadcaster RTP from Guinea-Bissau in the run-up to a postponed election scheduled to be held in November in the West African country. The Foreign Ministry said in a statement it had “immediately summoned the ambassador […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14895,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"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","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":[2362,33,27],"tags":[309,3406,1187],"class_list":["post-17354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-west-africa","tag-guinea-bissau","tag-portugal","tag-umaro-sissoco-embalo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17354","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}