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Alert

Journalist harassed by party activists

(MFWA/IFEX) - On 4 May 2009, Mamouni Ould Moctar, reporter with Agence Nouakchott d'Information, a Nouakchott-based newswire service, was manhandled by political party activists who were protesting the electoral timetable proposed by the military junta to return the country to democratic rule.

Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) correspondent reported that the demonstrators, who were members of the political party Rassemblement des Forces Democratiques (RFD), attacked Ould Moctar for taking photographs of them.

The correspondent said the attack on the journalist comes in the wake of an interview he had conducted with RFD leader Ahmed Ould Daddah, which was subsequently published on 28 April. In that publication, the reporter quoted Ould Daddah, as saying that the United States embassy in Nouakchott was providing technical and material support to the country's political parties and trade unions to oppose the military junta; a claim the RFD has since denied.

The RFD was formed in 2001 to denounce the country's coup d'état. It has organised a series of demonstrations to sustain the pressure on the junta to return the country to constitutional rule.