Published on 3 May 2006
20 November 2009 - Letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy on eve of talks with President Ali Bongo
13 November 2009 - Communications council punishes nine media
25 September 2009 - Fear in Libreville after leading daily’s editor is arrested and questioned for several hours
The government of Omar Bongo Odimba and the powerful state press spend a lot of energy in discrediting not only opposition parties but also the independent press. The presidential election in the autumn was seized on as a chance for a campaign to vilify and systematically discredit the opposition. Despite this outrageous imbalance, with little money and facing police brutality the few privately-owned publications in Libreville continued to provide news to Gabonese citizens without singing the praises of the doyen of African heads of state.
In September 2001, the Eritrean government ordered that all of the country’s privately owned publications be closed down. In the days that followed, police arrested above fifteen or so journalists and took them to Asmara’s police station No.
