Reporters Without Borders calls for end to media harassment

Reporters Without Borders called today on Algeria's rulers to immediately stop hounding the country's independent media as a dozen newspapers prepared for a protest shutdown on 22 September. The one-day protest, called "No-Press Day," is expected to involve a dozen of the country's 43 privately-owned newspapers, despite ideological and commercial rivalries, and will aim to publicise the situation nationally and internationally and convince the government to end the harassment and attacks on press freedom. The authorities, especially the group of people around President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, have over the past month stepped up efforts to silence the independent press, which continues to report cases of political and business corruption. Commercial and financial tricks were used at first to obstruct these papers (which sometimes resort to satire) and then steady harassment - including repeated police summoning of journalists, proprietors and editors - and finally arrests. Bouteflika has never had warm relations with the media since coming to power in 1999 but he and his aides now go through each independent newspaper, looking for anything that could be an excuse for legal action or even a trial for undermining the head of state. Article 144 b of the criminal code provides for between two months and a year in prison and fines ranging from 50,000 to 250,000 dinars (600 to 3,000 euros) for insulting or defaming the president, parliament or the army. Recent arrests have included Ahmed Benaoum (11 September), boss of the firm Er-raï el-Aam, which publishes the newspapers Er-raï, Le Journal de l'Ouest and the weekly Détective, and Fouad Boughanem, editor of Le Soir d'Algérie (16 September). Details of this extensive harassment have included: August - 14: Le Matin, Le Soir d'Algérie, Liberté, L'Expression, El Khabar and Er-raï ordered to pay their debts to government printers by 17August. - 18: All six papers fail to appear. - 21: Liberté et El Khabar pay off debts and reappear. - 23: Mohamed Benchicou, managing editor of the daily Le Matin, arrested at Algiers airport with large number of cash vouchers on him. The finance ministry files complaint against him for violation of foreign exchange and capital movement regulations. - 26: Police summon Farid Alilat, managing editor of the daily Liberté, editor Saïd Chekri, coordination chief Ali Ouafek and journalist Rafik Hamou. - 27: Le Matin reappears after paying off debts. Benchicou put on formal probation. - 28: Alilat, Chekri, Ouafek and Hamou present themselves to police. September - 1: Seven Liberté journalists summoned - including managing editor Alilat, former managing editor Outoudert Abrous, columnist Mustapha Hammouche, editor Saïd Chekri, cartoonist Ali Dilem and journalists Mourad Belaïdi and Rafik Benkaci. Le Soir d'Algérie reappears after paying off debts. - 3: Alilat, Chekri, Ouafek and Hamoun ordered to report to public prosecutor and examining magistrate and meanwhile conditionally freed. Hammouche and Belaïdi questioned by detectives after being summoned. Benchicou summoned. - 6: Benchicou and Dilem decide not to respond to any more police summons and only to appear before a court. Fouad Boughanem, managing editor of Le Soir d'Algérie, gets third summons. - 8: Formal summonses signed by state prosecutor delivered to Dilem and Benchicou, who are arrested by detectives and taken to Algiers central police station. - 9: Dilem and Benchicou charged with insulting the head of state and conditionally freed. Their arrest causes crowd to gather in street. Three photographers arrested and taken to police station, then released. - 11 Ahmed Benaoum arrested on basis of complaint against him for forgery related to two civil matters dating back 20 years. - 14: Benaoum put on formal probation then freed. A dozen independent papers decide to stage a "No-Press Day" on 22 September. - 16: Boughanem arrested in front of the Journalists' Centre in Algiers, taken to central police station and released a few hours later. Journalists come to protest at his arrest are briefly arrested, including Le Soir d'Algérie chief editor Badreddine Manâa, the paper's senior editor, Malika Boussouf, and Rabah Abdallah, secretary-general of the Algerian National Union of Journalists (SNJ). - 17: L'Expression reappears, after paying off its debts. - 22: "No-Press Day."