Nine independent and pro-Ouattara newspapers have shut this week in protest at threats by incumbent Laurent Gbagbo's camp.
Press freedom watchdogs said the shut downs followed more than two months of physical threats and fines by the pro-Gbagbo media regulatory body.
Gbagbo and Ouattara are embroiled in a violent power struggle over the disputed presidential election. The electoral commission results showed Ouattara won, but which the Gbagbo hasn't recognised the outcome and claims to be the rightful president.
Newspaper the Nouveau Reveil was shut down for a week for showing bloody pictures of a repression by security forces of a demonstration in support of Ouattara. Others shut down in solidarity.
"We denounce these attacks on the liberty of the press. There are those who want to see one sole opinion, instead of a plurality," said Stephene Goue, head of the committee. "We condemn the way the media has been taken as a target."
"Our concern for press freedom in Ivory Coast is mounting by the day," Reporters Without Borders said in a statement about the closures. "We offer our support to the privately-owned newspapers that are being hounded and threatened and have decided to denounce a situation that has become impossible for the press."
It also condemned the lynching of a journalist working for Gbagbo's party newspaper Notre Voie in a suburb of Abidjan where many Ouattara backers live. He was beaten and hacked to death.
Ivory Coast has a wide choice of newspapers, but they are hugely biased and some of them restrict themselves to churning out propaganda for one side of the other.
source: Reuters
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Has anybody in the west ever bothered to find out how these rebels (these so called democrats) rule the north that they took over since 2002. Which government or pro-Gbagbo paper did they allow to be published there. Ouattara is an opportunist and dishonest. He is no democrat. As for the New Forces the least said about them the better. They are nothing but a motley collection of muslim malcontents. When the west shipped out Khomieni to Iran they never thought they were sewing something that they will reap from years down the line. When the US armed Osama Bin Laden against the USSR they never dreamt of 9/11. Now they are supporting this fellow Ouattara and his muslim hordes in Cote D'Ivoire. I sometimes wonder is it that the west is cursed or they are just incapable of sound reasoning or should say it more bluntly that they are just plain stupid
Has anybody in the west ever bothered to find out how these rebels (these so called democrats) rule the north that they took over since 2002. Which government or pro-Gbagbo paper did they allow to be published there. Ouattara is an opportunist and dishonest. He is no democrat. As for the New Forces the least said about them the better. They are nothing but a motley collection of muslim malcontents. When the west shipped out Khomieni to Iran they never thought they were sewing something that they will reap from years down the line. When the US armed Osama Bin Laden against the USSR they never dreamt of 9/11. Now they are supporting this fellow Ouattara and his muslim hordes in Cote D'Ivoire. I sometimes wonder is it that the west is cursed or they are just incapable of sound reasoning or should say it more bluntly that they are just plain stupid
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