The Special Executive Assistant to President Ernest Bai Koroma, Dr Sylvia Blyden was quoted in her Awareness Times newspaper of yesterday as saying that the two journalists would soon be arrested under the country's criminal defamation laws.Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Franklyn Bai Kargbo has denied knowledge of a government plan to arrest the current and immediate past presidents of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), Kelvin Lewis and Umaru Fofana respectively. He was speaking to Politico.
The Attorney General told Politico that he would not comment on Blyden’s comment made on journalists because “I am not aware” of them. But he said his government was committed to upholding human rights including those of journalists, adding that the media was “too hysterical” in reacting to Blyden’s comment.
Blyden had said that there were “strong indications from the Attorney-General’s Office” that Lewis and Fofana could be charged.
Her comments followed an earlier one in which she had said that journalists in the country should “prepare for a massive and long overdue sanitisation” and also attacked the media regulator the IMC for having “no intention of using the powers granted them to maintain sanity in the media and so we, as a government, are going to be left with no option but to save the country from sliding backwards at the hands of reckless media practitioners. The only solution is to apply Part 5 of the Public Order Act of 1965 and start charging errant persons to court for criminal and seditious libel”.
Meanwhile, the International Press Institute (IPI) has urged “political leaders in Sierra Leone to distance themselves from the threatening remarks made by Blyden, and to commit to protecting press freedom as required by the country’s constitution”.
In a statement, IPI’s Executive Director, Alison Bethel McKenzie notes that “while it is important for the media in any country to practice basic journalism ethics, that does not mean that the press is required to endorse any particular point of view.” She said that “Instead of threatening to employ outdated criminal defamation laws against journalists, the Sierra Leone government should endorse the Declaration of Table Mountain, which calls for the abolition of such laws on the African continent.”
