Ahmed Suale would have been alive if the government had acted under threat – Anas | General news

Anas Aremeyaw Anas, an undercover investigative journalist, said his colleague, Ahmed Hussein Suale, shot dead by unknown badailants in Accra in January 2019, was believed to have been alive if the government took public threats against journalists at home. Ghana more seriously.

Speaking at the conference on media freedom in London organized by the British and Canadian governments, Anas, who enjoys worldwide respect for his bold investigative work, expressed his sadness at the events that have led to the murder of his colleague by unknown people.

"In recent times, very worrying events have taken place in the city. I remember the death of my colleague, the diligent journalist Ahmed Hussien Suale. "

The Anas' Tiger EyePI team opened an investigation into corruption in African football in 2018, following which Ghanaian MP Kennedy Agyepong denounced his methods in a series of broadcasts. he published on his TV channel, nicknamed Net 2 TV:? "

There he called for the hanging of Anas and further exposed the face of Ahmed Hussein Suale, until then unknown to many Ghanaians.

"When the politicians came on the scene and announced that they would hang journalists, they would have beaten journalists, if the government had talked about it and stayed firm, Ahmed Suale would not have died," Anas said.

He made the remark in front of an audience including British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Prime Minister, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, and well-known human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. .

He called on world leaders to do better to protect journalists facing government threats in their work and warned of the grave danger that the whole society could face in the face of the loss of confidence in the media.

He referred to his impending death experience recently covering a story in Tanzania.

"When we went back to the community to explain to them why they wanted to kill us for the story we were working on, they said that they had abandoned the politicians and … they had abandoned the reporters because a lot of people were being killed. in their community and no journalists defended them, "said Anas.

"The lesson is simple: if freedom of the press does not affect other communities, we are all in danger."

Anas also warned against deliberately abusive marking of real infiltration by journalists as false information by dictators seeking to undermine the courageous work exposing their misdeeds.

"If the leaders are able to describe the authentic undercover work that we did as false information, then we have problems."

Double standards

While praising Western governments for their support in developing media freedom, he blamed them for using their financial system to store funds that they accumulate for themselves and that they spend after leaving the office.

He concluded on a disturbing note, saying that if the world stood by to kill journalists for doing their job, no one would be safe.

World Conference on Freedom of the Media

The World Conference on Freedom of the Media is part of an international campaign to draw attention to media freedom and increase costs for those who are trying to restrict it.

The conference is structured around the themes of protection and prosecution, including impunity, national frameworks and legislation, building trust in the media and combating misinformation and the sustainability of media.

World leaders, representatives of the media industry, journalists, civil society and academia are among the main participants in the two-day summit.