Senegal

On Right to Know Day, September 28, ARTICLE 19 published a study on access to information in the fight against obstetric fistula in Tambacounda, South eastern region of Senegal, and called on the authorities to adopt a law on access to information and improve access to information on women’s reproductive health. Access to information is mentioned in the Senegalese Constitution but there is no...

There has been a sharp decline in relations between the government and the media in Senegal amid a wave of protests against President Abdoulaye Wade, who announced on July 14 in Dakar that he planned to “keep hold of the helm come hell or high water.” Harassment of the Walfadjri media group has intensified in the past month or so. Four journalists with the daily Walfadjri l’Aurore were summoned to...

A Dakar court Thursday gave Abdou Latif Coulibaly, the editor of the weekly La Gazette, a three-month suspended jail sentenced and fined him 10 million CFA francs (15,267 euros) for allegedly defaming a Senegalese businessman close to President Wade by accusing him of acting fraudulently in his dealings with the government. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) condemned...

Abdou Latif Coulibaly, one of Senegal’s most prominent journalists and writers, and two of the journalists who work with him on his weekly newspaper, La Gazette, have been fined 20 million CFA francs (30,000 euros) and given one-month suspended jail sentences in a libel case about alleged kickbacks in the allocation of a mobile phone licence. The much-awaited sentence – issued on November 16, two...

A six-month jail sentence has been imposed by a Dakar court on Abdourahmane Diallo, the editor of the Express News daily, for defaming President Abdoulaye Wade's chief of staff, Pape Samba Mboup. A warrant has been issued for the arrest of Diallo, who was tried in absentia, but he has not yet been detained. The Dakar criminal court that had tried Diallo in absentia finally issued its verdict on...