PHOTO: Cecelia Clarke, President of RAL
The largest auxillary in the Press Union of Liberia, Reporters Association (RAL) has threatened to take the Liberia National Police (LNP) to court for frequent act of brutality against reporters in their line of duty.
At a news conference in Monrovia this week, RAL’s President Cecelia Clarke in a statement condemned the attacks on two Journalists covering protest at the St. Moses Funeral Parlours in the Gardnersville suburb of Monrovia.
Since the incident, Police Inspector General Patrick Sudue has condemned the attack on the Journalists, but no action has so far been taken against this latest incident nor previous reported wave of multiple acts of police brutality against other Journalist.
RAL has also taken the police to task for its findings in the incident involving the death of a local Journalist in Liberia’s central Bong County, Chris David whose bullet-ridden body was discovered in Gbarnga recently.
Below full text of RAL press release:
Greetings, colleagues of the press. We have assembled you here today because we think our freedom to freely practice our profession is under threat.
We will speak to you on two major issues to include the constant rights violation of journalists and killing of a journalist in Bong County on accusations of stolen goat.
Media colleagues, if you can recall early this year, we started sensing increment in the level of violation of our rights as citizens of Liberia thus making us to join the Press Union of Liberia on the 12th of March to present our petition to the Liberian government highlighting police abuse, assault of national security services on journalists.
It was not long when the news carried it that government has set up Committee chaired by former Information Minister, Dr. Larry Bropleh comprising the CEO of Security Expert Guard Agency of Liberia (SEGAL), Momo Cyrus, and the former President of the Press Union of Liberia Peter Quaqua among others.
Since the committee was constituted, we have only observed its members leaving because of the lack of will power by the government to give Justice to us, the journalists.
Sadly, all those same things we protested against in March of this year are even on the increase.
On Monday, two of our colleagues, Emmanuel Davis and Zayzay Ballah in a live video were abused, beaten by state securities and their equipment seized
We see the constant brutalities against journastate securities as a calculated attempt to silence the media.
Distinguished members of the press,
How long shall we wait for justice in to be given Journalists in this country? Are we not members of the Liberian society?
We are going beyond this stage now!
Let it be known to Liberians and the world that our lawyers are being consulted to test the country’s Judiciary system.
We are sure that the Judiciary system is the best place to seek Justice.
Additionally, relating to the death of our colleague in Bong County, we categorically doubts those findings from State securities.
We want to publicly say that those findings are not true until a proper impartial investigation is conducted by an independent body to establish reasons behind the death of the journalist.
What was done recently by state securities linking the journalist to stolen goat was just a showmanship to make the society think otherwise about journalists in the Liberian society.
Similar thing happened when journalist Tyron Browne was stabbed and there were all kinds of things said about his death,Journalist Darlington Palena was alleged to have been an arm robber in Liberia because someone wanted to indict him.
Again, the journalist spent many months in detention and it was later established that the accusation was malicious and false.
We are highlighting all these to tell you how people get at others for no reason and the case of Chris might just be the same as Darlington and Tyron.
As we go for these elections come December 8,2020, we want to advise all of our colleagues to be very careful with how they go about their reportorial duties by observing all issues that have the ability to harm their security.
Remembered, no story worth dying for!
Colleagues, this conference is incomplete if we do not send a caveat to media owners to attach value to their reporters by paying them on time and having some increment in their take home stipends or salaries.
It takes away nothing from a media institution to pay reporters 200.00 United States or above.
We will stop her to take questions.
Thanks for the time.