Suriname’s Public Prosecution Service has released journalist Mones Nazarali, his attorney Greg Sitaram confirmed Thursday.
The Suriname Association of Journalists (SVJ) had called for Nazarali’s immediate release after he was arrested on Wednesday and slapped with several charges including defamation, slander, insult, false suspicion, and disturbance of public order.
Two senior police officers had filed the complaint against the journalist after he had broadcast a report of suspected corruption and incompetence in the Nickerie police. In the report, which he did outside the police station, the journalist said the police were targeting poor people instead of hunting down hardened criminals or dangerous pirates who terrorize local fishermen off the coast of Nickerie.
Nazarali was arraigned before a public prosecutor Thursday, who subsequently decided against proceeding with the matter.
The lawyer had said the intention was that Nazarali’s case would be put forward to an examining magistrate if he was not released by the Public Prosecution Service.
Sitaram said the investigation into the complaint by the police officers will continue. The lawyer believes that several articles of the Criminal Code have been added to give the case more weight. Nazarali was charged with sedition, disturbing public order, insult, false suspicion, defamation, simple insult, libel, and distribution of offensive writing.
In his report, Nazarali referred to two incidents in which people were found hunting the Red Ibis, which is protected by law, in the Bigi Pan Wetlands area, which is also protected by law.
He reported that in one case, two prominent lawyers were allowed to pay a “very small fine,” while in the second case some men who were caught catching tilapia in the same Wetlands area had to pay a combined fine of SRD120,000 (US$5, 500). The men had no license to fish there and their catch was estimated at US$45.
The SVJ had said it was “shocked at the arrest of Nazarali of Action Nieuws Suriname and that freedom of expression and freedom of the press has been seriously affected by his arrest, calling for an independent judicial investigation to be conducted into this incident.
The SVJ said as is customary in a constitutional state, the journalist has exercised his fundamental right to publicly discuss a case he suspects is “possible injustice, arbitrariness, and corruption.
“The incident and recent events are therefore a strong indication that in Suriname the right to free speech and the freedom of the press is seriously endangered by the use of power. This is unacceptable,” the SVJ said.
It warned that the colonial muzzle laws, also used in the recent arrests of activists and critics of the government, have no place in a healthy democratic society.
It said these outdated colonial articles in the Criminal Code were created to protect governments, authorities, and certain individuals. They silence the public debate, silence critics, and create a culture of fear in society.
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