Liberia: Press under attack- isolated incident? [opinion]

There was once upon a time in Liberia’s dark past when it was fashionable to silence the press by rounding up reporters and editors and incarcerating them for months without charge. There was also a time when anti-media cloak-and-dagger agents used the cover of darkness to raze media houses.

These are days that Liberians thought would never back again - ever. But they seem to already be at hand – or aren’t we? The Analyst presents this account of the ordeal of the newest newspaper in town – FrontPageAfrica (FPA).

 

The print edition of the online Liberian magazine, FrontPage Africa (FPA), reported Tuesday this week that its offices in Congo Town, Monrovia, came under arson attack days after it began operation from there.

 

Police and agents of the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) who reportedly started investigation into the incident hours following the reported attack have not turn up suspects up to press time last night.

 

There is no other information on what observers and the public consider a heinous attack that must be condemned and guide against by all Liberians of substance who want to live in a country where the press is not considered the enemy and graveyard peace hailed as heroic farsightedness of the status quo. The following is the unedited account of the FPA as reported by correspondent Nat Nyan Bayjay, quoting mainly eyewitnesses:

 

FrontPageAfrica Comes Under Attack; Survives Attempted Arson

 

With less than three weeks at its new location, FrontPageAfrica, Liberia’s most reliable online news magazine came under attack from unknown men whose attempt to set the news organ’s entire newspaper publishing facility ablaze failed. The attempted attack took place early Monday morning (about 3 AM) when two unknown men went to the giant news organ’s newly constructed Oldest Congo Town facilities and began to immediately set fire on the compound.

 

FrontPageAfrica recently relocated from its former Camp Johnson office in Central Monrovia to its newly constructed complex in Oldest Congo Town, Sinkor, in order to be able to accommodate the expansion of the entity’s scope of operations. An eyewitness who was in the premises when the incident occurred, the men tied a long piece of cloth to a plastic-bag in which gas was placed which they threw over the roof and began to light fire on the cloth to reach the plastic-bag containing the gas in order to cause the facilities to burn down. 

 

“They started striking matches sticks on that piece of cloth”, said Arthur Maseh, one of the security men who was on duty Monday night. Then I heard the sound and looked outside. I saw two men, one huge man and another fellow. When I shouted ‘Who there?’ they never moved. But when I started putting rogue-rogue behind them, they started running”, Maseh continued. 

 

“At first, I tried to open the gate without them hearing the sound of the gate. But it was hard for them to not hear the sound”, he said.

 

According to eyewitnesses who themselves are employees of the entity, the incident occurred immediately following the heavy downpour of rain Monday morning. The attempted attack on the news organ came after the entity had just produced its first two print versions as it undergoes its transitional period from online to print.

 

The first appearance of the FrontPage Newspaper on the Liberian news stand caused stir among the public who rendered huge praises on the entity which they believe will add more value to the competitive Liberian media landscape.

 

Meanwhile, two officers from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Liberian National Police (LNP) and the United Nations Police visited the scene of the attempted arson during which time preliminary investigation was conducted.
It remains unclear who are the master-minders of such evil.

 

Caveat from the Past
Media observers recalled that the first incident of arson on the media was recorded during the reign of the infamous People’s Redemption Council (PRC) military junta.

 

“The first casualty was the first independent newspaper, The Daily Observers, after the press was liberalized in the early days of the military coup. The PRC was enjoying favorable reporting from the government media and after a short honeymoon with The Observer, things took different course for the worst,” recalled former newspaper vendor William Toe, 54, of Clara Town.

 

Toe said he recall vividly the incident that short-circuited the PRC-Observer honeymoon: “The government had just introduced the centralized procurement system under the General Services Agency (GSA) and complaints were flying here and there from government agencies and ministries about delays.

 

The Daily Observer operated by Mr. Kenneth Best reported the difficulties being experienced by the government bureaucracy and backed the report with caricature of Charles Taylor trying with difficulty to juggle requests from the ministries and agencies. That angered the government.”

 

Incidentally, Charles Taylor, now facing war crimes charges in The Hague, was the first director general of the GSA under the PRC. It is while in this position that he reportedly swindled the government of some US $0.5 million and fled to the US when the Doe government got wind of the swindle and attempted to trap and investigate him first by transferring him to the Ministry of Commerce as deputy minister.

 

Toe said the Observer story noted the inefficiency and corruption involved in the GSA’s handling of the payload and suggested that the government resort to charging each ministry and agency with procuring its own office materials and services. Toe did not say whether or not it was the government or overzealous supporters of the PRC that set ablaze The Daily Observer’s Crown Hill offices at the time, but he expressed fears that just as state investigation into the arson turned up nothing – no suspect, no blame – the FPA incident may suffer the same fate. 

 

This was, he said, because the burning down of The Daily Observer’s offices was not the only anti-press act recorded during that period.

 

“That is the only case of arson I can remember. But I think there were not many cases of arson because most of the media houses that came up after The Daily Observer did not own their own operation facilities. They rented from private property owners. So the government has had to deal with each media house individually and openly.

Reporters and editors from Footprints and The Sun newspaper were simply rounded up for ‘false reporting’, bundled up in the back of security and sometimes military vehicles, and summarily incarcerated for months on end,” Toe said.

 

He said if the attacks against press freedom were ever thought to be the junta’s disdain for the media, the conjecture was wrong.

“Even under Charles Taylor The Analyst and The News newspapers had their shares of media hatred,” Toe recalled, noting that the editors of The Analyst and The News were detained for their reportage of the Taylor’s war with the rebels.

 

“The News got its hands seared for reporting that the Taylor administration was using millions of dollars to repair a reconnaissance helicopter. The Analyst’s offices were ransacked several times, equipment taken away, and its editor-in-chief abducted by state security and paraded at battlefronts in Western Liberia, sometimes left in makeshift solitary dark prison cells to be discovered and killed by marauding rebel militias or misguided ragtag militiamen of the government.

In all these incidents that ran through the ages, through political transitions and guard changes, and some say that have the government’s signature all over them, there were no attempt to ease the attack against the media. This has been so, according to observers, even though Liberians were unanimous in various documents, including the Constitution, that political pluralism, national unity, and the nation’s prosperity ought to begin with press freedom – with the unhindered and uncensored free exchange of information between the government and the people.

Some 15 months ago, the Press Union of Liberia and the Ministry of Information introduced a joint bill in parliament to make it legally mandatory for public officials to disclose public information upon demand. While that bill lay buried beneath layers of dust, the media again has come under attack for its reportage, analysts say, if the FPA incident is to be taken as typical of Liberia’s dark past. The question many are asking is, “Is the FPA incident going to be isolated or is it heralding another era of anti-media activities?”

 

 

-November 19, 2009 by The Analyst [editorial]

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Source: www.analystliberia.com/press_under_attack_nov19_09.html (accessed on 20.11.2009)