Letter to UNITY : Journalists of Color, Inc.
from Radio Nay Leer
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RADIO NAYLEER NEW YORK
dateSun, Jul 20, 2008 at 6:39 AM
subject : Letter to UNITY : Journalists of Color, Inc.
mailed-bygmail.com

To: Onica Makwakwa
Executive Director New York, July 19th, 2008
UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.
7950 Jones Branch Drive
McLean, VA 22107
Main (703) 854-3585
Fax: (703) 854-3586
nabj@nabj.org, info@unityjournalists.org

Dear Onica,
My name is Samba Prosper Mbaye and I am writing you on behalf of thousands of my fellow countrymen who are outraged by the fact that your organization is inviting Mister Abdoulaye Wade, President of Senegal, to address Journalists of color in Chicago on July 25th, 2008.
We Senegalese, living in Senegal or abroad, are deeply concerned by the fact that Mister Wade's visit to your organization coincide with a time when Senegalese journalists are witnessing the worsening of their working conditions.
On June 26th 2008, Mister Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, wrote a letter to president Wade after the brutal beating of two Senegalese journalists, Boubacar Kambel Dieng and Karamoko Thioune by police. Those police officers involved in the beating are still on the job as if nothing has ever happened. In his letter Mister Simon expressed the "deep concern of his organization about an ongoing culture of impunity for crimes against journalists." You can read the letter by visiting CPJ website at www.cpj.org. This incident is the last of a long list of abuses to journalists by president Wade and his close collaborators.
Here are few facts.
On august 2007,Transport Minister Farba Senghor threatened to "beat up" private daily Walf Grand-Place's reporter Pape Sambaré Ndour, after calling him a "bastard." The threats were later linked to a comment made by mister Ndour alleging that mister Senghor has lied about a diploma he said he earned from a management school in italy.
On april 2007 a critical comment made by an anonymous caller at Radio Disso FM located in Mbacké, 105 miles east of the capital Dakar earned the radio station a 45 minutes standoff and its staff threats by Moustapha Cisse Lo, a candidate of the ruling PDS party and its followers.
President Wade himself has been caught in an act of abuse to journalists. During the june 3rd, international conference on World Food Security held in Rome, Italy, president Wade threatened Yakham Mbaye, editor of the daily Le Populaire, according to journalists who have witnessed the incident.
As you can see the abuse of journalists is not an isolated act of police officers out of control. It is, in fact, a culture at the highest level of government. What should be the exemption is in fact the general rule.
To add insult to injuries, journalists are not only suffering abuses at the hands of those who were elected to protect them but they are also victims of laws enacted by the same people to keep them in check.
In July 2004 Madiambal Diagne, owner and managing editor of the popular independent newspaper Le Quotidien, was jailed for more than two weeks for articles he wrote in 2004 about alleged executive interference in the judiciary and corruption in the customs service. Diagne was imprisoned under a controversial national security provision known as Article 80 of the penal code.
Despite president's Wade promise to reform this controversial article, it is still in the books and extensively used to control the press. It was also used to send Idrissa Seck, the former prime minister, in jail for several months.
In may of this year the Committee to Protect Journalists has reiterated its call to Senegalese authorities "to end a pattern of criminal defamation prosecutions against the press" after many journalists were brought to court to face criminal proceedings for the expression of their opinions.
This year, Papa Moussa Guèye, director of the private daily L'Exclusif, based in the city of Rufisque, 24 miles east of Dakar, was the third Senegalese journalist handed a six-month suspended prison term within a week for alleging presidential late-night "escapades."
This same year the director Jules Diop and Editor-in-Chief Serigne Saliou Samb of private daily newspaper L'Observateur were handed six-month suspended prison sentences and heavy damages over a critical story.
As I write these excesses and abuses are still going on.
Few weeks ago one of the veteran Senegalese journalist and media professor, Abdou Latif Coulibaly, was prevented from traveling to the US, where he was invited to speak at a conference organized by sengalese living in the New York City. He was handed an order to appear in court on july 19th to answer questions about accusations he made in his latest book on the pillaging of the LONASE, the national lottery entity.
We can go on and on. Nothing has prevented the authorities to do away with this controversial provision of our penal code but their willingness to keep in check and domesticate the press.
In Ghana criminal sanctions for libel, publication of false news, and defaming the president were repealed in 2001. We can do the same in Senegal but as I said the authorities, for their own comfort, prefer to set limits journalist can't cross.
In a June 13th article posted in your website and talking about the address president Wade will give at your convention in Chicago, you quoted the International League of Human Rights, which recognized him" as an African leader of great conviction and accomplishments whose tireless work to advance democratic values, multi-party elections and transparent governance has promoted human rights and economic development in Senegal and throughout Africa."
This appreciation contrasts profoundly with a memo written in the june 18th, 2008 issue of the New York Times, sent from Dakar by Lydia Polgreen and titled Shadows Grow Across One of Africa's Bright Lights. I am inviting you to read that article to catch a glimpse of what is really going on in Senegal.
Let me travel through few anecdotes contained in that article. In may of this year Senegal hosted the organization of the Islamic Summit which was much financed by Islamic donors. Little accounting has been given for the money spent during the summit. Do you know who was in charge? Karim Wade, the only son of president Wade. In the same New York Times article you can read that "when the speaker of the National Assembly tried to question the president's son about spending for the summit meeting, the speaker's party leadership position was abolished and the assembly introduced a bill to cut his term to a single year." The article also states that a study commissioned by the United States Agency for International Development last year Concluded that"a lack of transparency in public affairs and financial transactions, as well as chronic corruption, plague Senegal today."
Are these two examples good illustrations of "transparent governance" to you?
Last year, after a badly run presidential election, the opposition called for reform in the electoral code in order to ensure acceptable legislative elections. Mister Wade refused to hear that call and pressed ahead with the organization of the election. The major parties refused to take part, "so the national assembly
is made up almost exclusively of Mr Wade's allies." Is this an "advancement of democratic values, and the promotion of multi-party elections" to you?
In the same article of the New York's Time it is stated that "once a darling of international donors, who have spent millions to help Senegal build schools and clinics, pay off its debts and plan infrastructure projects, the country has found itself criticized by representatives of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank over public spending and policies that have worsened the effects of rising food prices." Is this a "promotion of human rights and economic development in Senegal ?"
Dear friends at Unity, here are the real deeds of the man who will be speaking at your convention in Chicago. He is denying to his people, specially to journalists, the freedom you are granting him.
You can argue that this letter is out of context because Mr Wade will be speaking about climate change and not human rights. Don't you think that there is an intimate link between the physical environment and the social one? Can one achieve progress in the first one by ignoring the second one?
On the preservation of the environment front president Wade is not a model in the continent. He is known for declassifying forests in Senegal and giving them to his allies for mere political reasons despite the advice of experts in forestry not to do so.
This year 18 children died of lead poisoning in Ngagne Diaw, a neighborhood in the suburbs of the capital, Dakar. His policies have so impoverished our people that they do whatever they can to survive, including exposing themselves to toxic such as lead.
Dear friends at UNITY, welcome to Senegal.
Let me finish by telling you that as minority journalists I don't have to teach you about the oppression and social injustice journalists in Senegal are going through. But I can tell at least that since you have seen the light don't keep it to yourself. Because no journalist will be free until all journalists are free. You owe it to your colleagues in Senegal.
Again welcome to our country.

By Samba Prosper Mbaye, M.P.H., C.H.E.S.
For Radio Nay Leer a one hour political show broadcasting every Monday FROM 9-10PM on WPAT 930 AM in New York City
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