2023-08-28 08:36:12
The government cut off the internet on Saturday evening and instituted a curfew in Gabon, citing the risk of violence, shortly before the end of the presidential election between outgoing Ali Bongo Ondimba and his main opponent, Albert Ondo Ossa, who had just denounced ” fraud” and to demand to be declared the winner at the end of the ballot.
In the evening, the public television channel, quoting the High Authority for Communication (HAC), had announced “the provisional ban on the broadcasting in Gabon of the media France 24, RFI and TV5 Monde” to which it is “blamed for a lack of objectivity and balance in the treatment of information in connection with the current general elections”.
In a press release on Sunday, France Médias Monde, a group to which Radio France International and France 24 belong, expressed its “incomprehension”. The group “regrets and is surprised by this provisional suspension, without foundation”, and which “deprives the Gabonese of two of their main sources of reliable and independent information”.
Faced with this temporary cut, France Médias Monde “reaffirms its attachment to freedom of information, to pluralism of information as well as to professional work and to the safety of its journalists and correspondents, in Gabon as everywhere in the world”.
The group also ensures that it complies “in all respects with the provisions of the agreement signed on March 15, 2021 with the Gabonese media regulatory authority”.
1693212927
#misunderstanding #RFI #France #temporarily #suspended