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"DRACONIAN" LAW USED TO MUZZLE CRITICS

In Sierra Leone, where journalists can be jailed for libeling public officials, the Public Order Act has become a convenient tool for silencing critics. Just ask Paul Kamara, Sydney Pratt and Dennis Jones. All three journalists have been imprisoned on charges of "seditious libel" after writing articles about alleged government corruption.

The move has provoked outrage from the International Press Institute (IPI), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF), who are urging authorities to immediately release the journalists and drop the criminal charges against them. The IFEX members say press offences should be decriminalised and treated under civil law.

Pratt and Jones, who work for the weekly newspaper "Trumpet", were arrested in Freetown on 24 May 2005 after publishing an article headlined "Kabbah Mad over Carew Bribe Scandal." It cited an unnamed source who claimed that President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was angered by earlier allegations that two senior cabinet ministers had accepted bribes.

Kamara, the editor and publisher of the newspaper "For Di People", is serving two concurrent two-year prison sentences for articles that were critical of the president. He was sentenced in October 2004. The charges stem from articles Kamara wrote in October 2003 which detailed a 1967 commission of inquiry linking Kabbah to fraud allegations.

Sierra Leone's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established by the UN to document human rights abuses, has called on the government to repeal laws criminalizing seditious and defamatory libel and has recommended a moratorium on prosecutions under those laws. According to the commission's statute, the government is required to implement its recommendations faithfully and in a timely manner.

Visit these links:
- CPJ: http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/Sierra25may05na.html
- RSF: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=13937
- IPI: http://www.freemedia.at/resolutions2005.htm#gambia
- PEN Canada Backgrounder on Paul Kamara: http://www.pencanada.ca/prison/hm.php?writerID=70
- Interview with Paul Kamara: http://www.worldpress.org/Africa/1025.cfm
IFEX Members' Reports on Sierra Leone:
- CPJ: http://www.cpj.org/attacks04/africa04/sierra.html
- IPI: http://www.freemedia.at/wpfr/Africa/sierrale.htm
- Reporters Without Borders: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=13572&Valider=OK
- Human Rights Watch: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/12/15/sierra9876.htm
- Freedom House:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2004/countryratings/sierra-leone.htm