Guinea-Bissau has plunged into an information apocalypse with the closure of 79 radio stations by the government due to the failure to renew licenses within an almost impossible deadline.
The Ministry of Social Communication announced in a press release on April 7, 2022, that the 72-hour deadline given by Minister Fernando Mendonça for 88 radio stations to regularize the status of their broadcasting licenses ended on April 6, 2022.
According to the government, “of the total of 88 radio stations notified, to date only nine license holders have appeared at the Ministry for due process, a situation considered by the Ministry of Social Communication as non-compliance with the guidelines imposed by the State of Guinea-Bissau.”
As a result, the authorities ordered the closure of 79 radio stations that did not comply with the guidelines. The measure affects national, regional and community radio stations.
The mass closures add to recent setbacks in the media space that have created a crisis in access to information in Guinea-Bissau. Currently, workers at national radio and television stations are on strike. It is also important to note that the nine stations, out of the 88 planned, that have met the license renewal deadline are mostly religious channels that offer little content in terms of socio-political issues and real development. In addition, Rádio Capital FM, the most vibrant radio station in the capital, Bissau, has been off the air for the past month, after a group of men in military uniform carried out a devastating attack on the station on February 7. Thus, the radio sector was effectively decimated and the country’s airwaves reduced to almost total silence.
“While we recognize the need for the government to enforce the law applicable to broadcasting, we are concerned that the primary need to guarantee citizens’ right to access information is being carelessly sacrificed. We therefore call on the government to reverse the closure and engage the affected stations in dialogue,” said Muheeb Saeed, Senior Program Officer for Freedom of Expression at the MFWA.
Radio is the main means of communication through which the majority of Guineans in Bissau access information on important national issues, health, education, the environment or agriculture. Many of them broadcast in national languages, thus promoting inclusion and national cohesion.
Diamantino Domingos Lopes, secretary general of the Union of Journalists and Media Technicians – SINJOTEC, said that the media fraternity was shocked by the decision. He told the MFWA program officer in Guinea-Bissau that the Union had scheduled a meeting with the Minister of Social Communication, Fernando Mendonça, on April 8 to resolve the issue of the license.
Lopes lamented that “freedom of information in Guinea-Bissau is being threatened and the closure of radio stations means that we are going backwards. We need to find a peaceful solution, through diplomatic means, to find a consensus that will sustain the sector.”
It costs around 450 US dollars to renew a radio license in Guinea-Bissau, which is a lot of money in a media sector beset by a series of daunting challenges, including technical, capacity and financial problems. Many stations go months without being able to pay their workers their full salaries.
The Minister for Social Communication, however, insists that the responsibility lies with the radio stations to ensure a return to normality, ruling out any suspension of the order until the affected radio stations make an effort to respond to the warning. In a telephone chat with the MFWA, Fernando Mendonça said that it is not a question of extending the deadline, but of the stations fulfilling their obligations. Once they approach us, we are ready to listen, but we will not tolerate any deliberate defiance of authority.
Mendonça said that the Ministry issued a previous 72-hour ultimatum on February 10, 2022, which the media outlets ignored. “We cannot allow pirate radio stations to operate in Guinea-Bissau,” he said, rejecting any suggestion that the action was a crackdown on critical media.
While we appreciate the Guinea-Bissau government’s effort to ensure compliance with regulatory codes, we still urge the authorities to be conciliatory in view of the detrimental effect of mass closures on citizens’ right to information and considering the recent problems in the country’s media space. We also call on the managers of the affected media outlets to approach the authorities in order to find a solution that will allow them to resume broadcasting immediately.
