Five weeks of silence have just ended in Niger. Moussa Kaka, a 66-year-old journalist nobody had heard from since 31 August, is alive and in the hands of the authorities. Reporters Without Borders made the news public on Tuesday 6 October, saying it came from the justice minister himself, Alio Daouda.
According to the press freedom organisation, the minister said the journalist had allegedly committed an offence and would have to answer for it in court. Nothing further has emerged. The place of detention remains unknown, as do the precise nature of the accusations and the legal basis for holding him.
For RSF, the admission cuts both ways. By providing proof of life, argues Sadibou Marong, head of the group’s sub-Saharan Africa desk, Niamey has also acknowledged its role in a disappearance that has lasted more than a month. The organisation describes the detention as wholly arbitrary and is calling for the journalist to be freed at once.
Kaka vanished only days after a mutiny shook the capital, an attempt the military government eventually foiled with decisive support from its Russian ally. Since then, his family and colleagues had been living in anguish, while the authorities said nothing.
It took international pressure to get an answer. After RSF referred the case in late September, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on Monday instructed Niger to clarify without delay what had happened to the journalist and where he was. The minister’s statement came the following day.
A well-known figure in Niger’s media landscape, Moussa Kaka runs Radio Télévision Saraounia, a private broadcaster. He was also for many years the correspondent of Radio France Internationale, now suspended by the junta, whose hostility towards France has been openly displayed since it took power.
What remains to be seen is whether judicial proceedings will actually be opened, and whether the journalist will at last be allowed visits from his relatives and lawyers.