BBC NEWS | Africa | Niger halts BBC hunger coverageMy question here is not sarcastic - in fact it is quite honest. See I labor every day, so that news from my country will be heard around the world, so that maybe more people will put pressure on the powers that be, to fess-up to their historical responsability - and their humanitarian duty. You will therefore understand that I do not understand attitude of the Niger government here. I may be naive... that is why I am asking for anybody who does see the logic, to enlighten me. In the mean time, I am still wondering...
"Niger has withdrawn permission for a BBC team which found evidence of hunger in the country to continue to report on the humanitarian situation there.
Officials said international and local media would not be allowed to do stories about the food situation as they did not want that subject touched.
Hunger and malnutrition are recurrent problems in Niger, which is the poorest country in the world.
Last week the United Nations included Niger in a major fundraising appeal."
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Hi Ali, I tracked the news on Niger's so called famine last year - here is a link to one of the posts:
http://nigerwatch.blogspot.com/2005/09/can-aid-do-more-harm-than-good-who-is.html
My theory is that the government of Niger is embarassed that the famine (or whatever euphemism they want to use) is happening again a second year in a row. So they want to ban embarassing coverage of it.
Another theory I've heard is that the government was upset that last year, NGOs got all the credit for addressing the hunger emergency and the government felt like it was being eclipsed.
Either way, it reflects poorly on Pres. Tandja's regime.
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