Two attacks in two weeks have hit Lesotho’s media and civic space. The government’s silence and reassurances are no longer enough.
Two weeks ago, Newsday editor and human rights defender Kananelo Boloetse was abducted, assaulted and left for dead. Yet the government of Lesotho, through the leadership of the Lesotho Mounted Police Service, was accused of playing down the gravity of what happened instead of treating it as the national crisis it should have been.
A second attack in a fortnight
Then, on Saturday, 12 September, KEL Radio was vandalised and forced off air.
Two disturbing incidents. Two attacks on people or institutions at the heart of Lesotho’s civic and media space.
If journalists can be abducted and left for dead, while a radio station can be vandalised and knocked off the air, then the government owes the country more than reassurance.
And now, after all this, the government of Lesotho is expected to come out and assure the media fraternity and the nation that the media is not under attack.
Really?
Is Lesotho’s media under attack
If journalists can be abducted and left for dead, while a radio station can be vandalised and knocked off the air, then the government owes the country more than reassurance.
It owes us answers.
Who is protecting journalists?
Who is protecting media houses?
Who is investigating these attacks?
And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all: at what point does a series of attacks stop being isolated incidents and become a threat to press freedom itself?
The country is watching
Lesotho cannot dismiss every incident as unrelated and then ask the public to believe that everything is fine.
The media fraternity is watching. So is the country.
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