Fighting to be heard

Watch journalists discuss freedom of the press in Africa.

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- A delegation of journalists from developing African countries say a free press is far from guaranteed in their homelands, where governments often use imprisonment and intimidation to silence criticism.

The nine-member group visiting Southern Illinois University includes journalists, professors and government officials from Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.

They leave SIUC today after eight days on campus participating in workshops, giving lectures and meeting with students.

Ernest Acidri Al-fodio, 36, is the chief news editor at Radio Pacis, a radio station broadcasting to rural areas of northwest Uganda. He oversees a team of more than 60 news correspondents in villages and towns throughout the country.

Though Al-fodio says a free press is gaining strength in his nation, he still must tolerate restrictions American journalists can hardly imagine. For example, while broadcasting on the eve of national elections in February 2006, armed police stormed his station and demanded that it stop broadcasting.

"They told us we were violating the rule. The rule was that after a certain time we shouldn't be letting politicians on the air. So the police came in and told us to stop right there," he said.

The politicians he had on air just happened to be members of the party that is the chief opposition to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. The next day, Museveni was re-elected as president, a position he has held for 21 years.

"There has been a lot of government interference," Al-fodio said.

Press intimidation is common in many African nations run by "strongman" dictatorships or flimsy democracies, the journalists said. But Al-fodio sees change in the offing. His station has a strong signal that can reach as many as 4 million listeners in Uganda and neighboring Sudan and Congo. The station airs programming in four languages, including English. Increasingly, he said, government ministers are being asked to go on the radio and meet with reporters rather than simply shutting down media outlets.

"People are raising issues. People are debating issues. In fact, the media has become a forum for the exchange of certain kinds of issues. The president himself first writes in the papers. He is asking his [cabinet members] to go on the radio and articulate the issues. So the fact that they're asking people to go on the radio, it means they take the media very seriously," he said.

Noor Khamis, 45, is a photo editor for The Standard, Kenya's second-largest newspaper. Published in the capital of Nairobi, his daily paper prints five regional editions and has a circulation of about 70,000.

In Kenya even photographers are not immune from government interference, he said. In 2006, Khamis was assigned to photograph a swearing-in ceremony for newly elected cabinet ministers. The angle he used to shoot the event showed a great number of empty seats in the audience. "When the picture hit the streets the following day, they were not impressed. Actually they really got quite mad," Khamis said.

After an angry call from a high-ranking government official to his supervisor, Khamis was told he would no longer cover governmental events.

Intimidation of this sort is not uncommon, he said, but he stands by his photo. "I depicted the thing the way it was. There were a lot of empty seats. It's not the kind of swearing-in ceremony that is up to our standards. Swearing-in ceremonies are always packed, so having so many empty seats, it really spoke a lot," he said.

A photojournalist for 17 years, Khamis every day photographs carjackings, murders, accidents and other events that are facts of life in Nairobi, one of the world's most crowded and crime-ridden cities.

U.S. 'more silent'

The United States is quiet by comparison, he said, making a journalist's work more difficult."I see the U.S. as a more silent community. That's nice, but a photographer from Africa might find it very difficult to settle here," he said.

Solomon Gebregziabher, 35, of Ethiopia is the editor of Addis Admas, a weekly newspaper. In recent years, Gebregziabher has witnessed press freedoms in Ethiopia decline. After a hotly contested election in 2005, rioting broke out in the streets, resulting in the deaths of 197 protesters and six police officers. Hoping to clamp down on dissent in the aftermath, government officials closed down seven newspapers and jailed 12 journalists, Gebregziabher said.

Gebregziabher writes editorials for his paper and said the strong-armed tactics against reporters "compels us to self-censorship."

"You can't work as you would like to work if you think always, What would the government say? ... If you are concerned too much on this and not on what the facts are and what you think, you can't work," he said.

But he hopes a free press can grow alongside democracy. In a country where politics, medical care and the economy are all underdeveloped, it is understandable that press freedoms also lag behind, he said.

"It's impossible to imagine democracy without a free press. I would hope they could develop side by side, one helping the other."

Today the delegation will travel to Chicago where they will sit in on an editorial board meeting at the Chicago Tribune. They will also travel to Washington, D.C., to visit the offices of Voice of America and meet with Department of State officials.

The trip is funded by a $240,000 grant from the U.S. State Department's Office of Resident Exchanges.

tgreaney@semissourian.com

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