View from my Room

Fallout from the Gaddafi visit. One of the things that was remarkable was that Gaddafi was implicated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the rebel activity here… he helped train both Liberia’s Charles Taylor and RUF’s Sankoh, yet thousands came out to cheer him, and SL President Kabbah was happy to hug him in public. Very strange. Part of Kabbah’s speech as I mentioned included the long list of things Gaddafi gave SL, such as rice etc. Turns out the people have never seen any of the rice or money. One of the SL newspapers wrote a big cover article saying: “Gaddafi exposes Government” and attributed that long shopping list to Gaddafi, which was wrong. Yesterday that newspaper, the Standard Times, was raided by police. I went to interview the publisher, who confessed to being intimidated, and joined him later at the police station where he was “invited” to attend. I waited for a long time while he, his lawyer and the police conferred.

Odd aside: while I waited, I talked to one of the Assistant Superintendants of Police and chatted to him in his office. He mentioned he is not just a policeman but an artist. He pulled out a Fisher Price-looking plastic tape recorder and proceeded to play a song he wrote and sang urging people to come out for the elections. It was somewhat surreal—next door a journalist was in custody and this guy was playing me his songs. Turns out he also recorded one supporting the ruling party (SLPP). He saw no conflict at all with the assistant police chief writing a jingle for the government party.

Anyhow, it struck me how few reporters were following the story of their imprisoned comrade. Myself and a young reporter from Skyy Radio waited in the rain for the meeting to finish. Turns out it’s a “state matter” so they will have to wait for the government to act before they can release him. It doesn’t look good. Atrocious. The paper did err by messing up the attribution but this could have been remedied with a simple correction or retraction. Instead, the publisher will probably spend a couple of days in jail. So much for a free press. Very discouraging.