Vitriolic attacks on mainstream media in the U.S. could be giving repressive foreign leaders the go-ahead to stifle their own media critics, thus ending a recent opening for crusading journalists in Africa and the developing world.
This week, the NY-based Committee to Project Journalists urged the Trump administration to end its war on media, and instead champion press freedom.
The president’s attacks on the press “do not help our work with countries like Turkey, Ethiopia or Venezuela, where you have governments who want to do nothing more than silence and intimidate the press,” said Rob Mahoney, CPJ deputy director.
In fact, observed the Media Foundation for West Africa, the state of press freedom on the continent is already “under siege.”
“Security agencies, particularly the police, appear to be on a rampage against journalists and media workers,” the press group wrote last week in a published statement. “In a space of 38 days (Jan. 5-Feb. 12, 2017), 30 media workers have been arrested, detained and/or assaulted by security forces, prompting fears that the gains made in recent years in freedom of expression could be eroded.”
The 30 victims were from Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea and Togo.
“The above crackdown is a frightening flashback to the gross human rights abuses, including freedom of expression rights violations, witnessed in the sub-region during the heady days of military dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s,” warned the MFWA, adding, “All four countries in which these violations occurred have legal frameworks that guarantee media freedom.”
In Ghana, as reported by the MFWA, two media workers were assaulted while attempting to film the demolition of residential buildings in a suburb of Accra. The reporters were accused of fabricating a story to embarrass the government. A court ruling this week found that no offense was committed and ordered apologies given to the two journalists.
A land dispute was also the center of an attack on a reporter in Togo who was covering an eviction in a suburb of the capital, Lome. Since lodging a complaint against his perpetrators, the journalist has become the target of intimidation, the MFWA said.
Other incidents reported by the Media Institute of Southern Africa included the cutting of broadcast signals by the government of Lesotho for allegedly airing defamatory content about the country’s prime minister and his deputy, and Malawi shutting down a publishing house in the midst of an investigation into “maize-gate.”
The Gambia, however, got a thumbs-up this week from the MFWA after a veteran press freedom fighter was named information minister by the newly elected President Adama Barrow. “Mr. Demba Ali Jawo will be the driver of much-anticipated reforms expected to create progressive press freedom and a freedom of expression environment,” the MFWA said.
NO CLUES YET AS TO U.S. POLICY FOR AFRICA BUT THEORIES ABOUND
(GIN)—If the U.S. president has an Africa policy in the works, he’s keeping the details close to his chest. So far, there is neither an assistant secretary of state for Africa nor an ambassador. The incumbent secretary, Linda Thomas Greenfield, retires March 10.
Peter Pham, vice president and Africa director of the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., is reportedly seeking a position.
In a strategy paper prepared for the Trump administration, Pham proposed an initiative he calls “earned engagement.”
The U.S., he says, should grant diplomatic recognition only to governments with legitimate sovereign control over their countries. Somalia, for example, would not be among those countries, having had 15 transitional governments after the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in 1991. None of these governments were recognized by Republican or Democratic administrations.
Recognition might also be withdrawn from the Democratic Republic of Congo if President Joseph Kabila fails to honor his commitment to retire this year after elections.
More resources would be channeled into AFRICOM, according to Pham, not only to address insecurity directly but also to continue to beef up African militaries.
Other clues to the president’s Africa plans appeared last month in a New York Times article that revealed a retreat from development and humanitarian goals while pushing business opportunities across the continent.
New executive orders are reportedly being prepared with drastic funding cuts to U.N. peacekeeping operations—now almost a third of which are funded by the U.S.—the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Population Fund, which oversees maternal and reproductive health programs.
Anton du Plessis, head of the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies, fears that Trump will “securitize” U.S. policy, funding and engagement in Africa, focusing heavily on security problems such as Boko Haram, while ignoring efforts to create stability in the long term through democracy, good governance and sustainable development.
Among such efforts would be one of former President Barack Obama’s most successful programs, the Young African Leaders Initiative, which brings several hundred young African professionals and entrepreneurs to the U.S. for six weeks each summer.
“It is possible that Trump’s term in office will surprise us on Africa,” observed former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson. “Republican administrations have outperformed on this front before. President Bush certainly did, and his two landmark initiatives—PEPFAR and the Millennium Challenge Corporation—remain extremely popular.”
But given the absence of any serious White House interest in Africa, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, with limited knowledge of Africa after having dealt mainly with corrupt and authoritarian leaders as head of ExxonMobil, may become the key American player on Africa.