Freedom of Speech and Press
The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and of the press; however, the government limited press freedom during the year and intimidated journalists or publishers into practicing self-censorship.
Individuals criticized the government publicly and privately, generally without reprisal; however, on occasion the government attempted to impede such criticism.
The independent media were active and expressed a wide variety of views.
Journalists were subject to harassment and arrest. For example, on March 5, a court convicted Kabako newspaper journalists Diaby Macoro Camara and Oumar Bore of defaming Marimantia Diarra, the minister of planning; a December 2006 article in Kabako alleged that the minister ordered a local mayor to annul the marriage of his ex-fiance and compelled police to raid her residence. The newspaper claimed the mayor and police confirmed the allegations. Both journalists received a four‑month suspended sentence and a $100 (46,500 CFA francs) fine. Referring to the case, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement that "sending journalists to jail for their reporting is out of step with Mali's democratic values."
In June Bassirou Kassim Minta, a local high school teacher, assigned his class a fictional essay about the mistress of an unnamed head of state and was arrested on June 14 for "offending the head of state"; Info-Matin journalist Seydina Oumar Diarra wrote an article criticizing Minta's judgment, but was arrested on the same charge on June 14. On June 20, four newspaper editors-—Sambi Toure of Info-Matin, Birama Fall of Le Republican, Alexis Kalambry of Les Echos, and Mahamane Hameye Cisse of Le Scorpion—also were charged and arrested after they reprinted the original article to demonstrate solidarity with Diarra. Defense lawyers for the six boycotted legal proceedings to protest the government's restrictions on the press and handling of the case.
At the June 26 trial, the judge accepted a motion from the public prosecutor to remove the press and observers from the courtroom to "protect" the public from the "salacious" details of the case. The five journalists were convicted, given suspended prison sentences, and fined between $400 (178,800 CFA francs) and $1,200 (536,400 CFA francs). Minta, the teacher, was sentenced to two additional months' imprisonment and fined $1,200 (536,400 CFA francs). Outside the courtroom, leaders of the local journalists union objected to being barred from attending legal proceedings involving professional colleagues.
The government harassed media outlets during the year. For example, in March the Office du Niger (ON), a government agency that regulates irrigation and agriculture in the country's rice-growing region, served an eviction notice on Radio Jamakan, a local radio station that operated out of an ON‑owned building in Markala. Radio Jamakan and the CPJ charged that the eviction was a result of the station's March 3–4 broadcast of an opposition meeting. In 2006 ON stopped supplying electricity to the station after it broadcast a conference of government critics.
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In Mali, Civil Liberties
Famous quotes containing the words freedom of speech, freedom of, freedom, speech and/or press:
“The freedom to make a fortune on the Stock Exchange has been made to sound more alluring than freedom of speech.”
—John Mortimer (b. 1923)
“The essence of the modern state is that the universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with private well-being, that thus the interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state.... It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order.”
—W.E. (William Ewart)
“Speech and prose are not the same thing. They have different wave-lengths, for speech moves at the speed of light, where prose moves at the speed of the alphabet, and must be consecutive and grammatical and word-perfect. Prose cannot gesticulate. Speech can sometimes do nothing more.”
—James Kenneth Stephens (1882–1950)
“Be sure then to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn, without asking, in the street and the train.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)