THE illegal arrest and detention of Lesotho Times and Sunday Express editor, Mohalenyane Phakela, has regrettably taken the country two giant steps back into the limelight as a problem child in the southern Africa region.
No sooner had the government made spirited efforts to fast-track the 10th Amendment Bill to take Lesotho out of the radar than some zealots at DCEO decided to undo all that effort by arresting and detaining Mr Phakela on charges his lawyer has roundly condemned as false.
What a shameful setback to the pomp fan and fanfare that welcomed Prime Minister Sam Matekane when he came back from the SADC Summit in Madagascar where Lesotho was removed from the ignominious Troika agenda.
Phakela was arrested on a fictitious, trumped up and flimsy charge of allegedly impersonating a Directorate on Corruption and Economic Offences (DCEO) to secure information for one of the several exposes that have become the hallmark of Lesotho Times reporting.
The DCEO on Friday night raided the offices of the Lesotho Times in the capital and arrested Phakela over a story exposing alleged corruption by the Commissioner of the Lesotho Correctional Service, Mating Nkakala, whose tenure last year saw a rare prison break and inhumane treatment of prisoners.
One prisoner later died while another is now permanently wheelchair-bound with several others maimed in different ways under Nkakala’s watch. He is being further investigated for allegedly converting two TV sets donated for inmates to personal use.
The DCEO seized Phakela’s cellphones without a search warrant despite a Constitutional Court order barring such actions by law enforcement officers, Basildon Peta, CEO of Africa Holdings, which owns the Lesotho Times, says.
Several respected international journalists’ associations have aptly condemned this strange act which had no place in modern, pluralistic society where vital players like journalist contribute immensely to the protection of public financial resources in a dispensation of scarcity and escalating unemployment.
CPJ’s Africa Regional Director demanded Phakela’s immediate release and condemned the phone seizure as a grave threat to journalists’ source protection.
“Instead of intimidating and censoring the press, the government of Lesotho should commit to defending press freedom and concentrate its resources on investigating and prosecuting the real criminals,” CPJ said.
A senior lawyer at Seinoli Legal Center, condemned the DCEO’s move as scare mongering.
“This is not law enforcement. This is intimidation.”
Journalism is indeed a public good not a threat. Therefore when journalists are punished for exposing corruption, it is a telling signal that a country is headed towards a precipice and history has shown a worrying correlation between intolerant authorities and escalating corruption and abuse of public office.
We urge the DCEO to do the right thing and drop the spurious charges and, instead, invest their energy in pursuing dozens of white collar criminals roaming the country in designer suits.
We urge the Government of Lesotho and the DCEO to immediately cease all forms of intimidation against journalists. These actions violate our commitments under regional and international human rights instruments and undermine the rule of law.
As if to rub salt to the wound, the government has been indifferent to the uncalled for arrest arguing that the arrest of a journalist is nothing to write home about, yet it is the same journalists who sacrifice life and limb to investigate alleged corruption. The media should be seen as a partner for DCEO in its core duty of tackling corruption, instead of treating journalists like enemies.
Media freedom is to democracy what blood is to the human body; it oils democracy and along with civil liberties that are enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
Perhaps the most worrying fact about this sad episode is that all rogue authorities love testing the waters, it maybe journalist today but next it will be anyone else even a non-journalist citizen going about their business.
Let us recall the famous statement from the Jewish holocaust memoirs:
“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”
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