2023-11-02 23:06:49
Ceremonies were organized on Thursday in Abidjan and Paris in honor of the tenth anniversary of the murder of journalist Ghislaine Dupont and technician Claude Verlon in Mali. Debates on press freedom in the Sahel were proposed and a scholarship in their honor presented in the economic capital of Côte d’Ivoire.
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Pay tribute to defend freedom of the press. Radio France Internationale (RFI) and the association “Friends of Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon” commemorated Thursday, November 2 in Abidjan and Paris the tenth anniversary of the assassination in northern Mali of this journalist and this RFI technician .
Ghislaine Dupont, 57, and Claude Verlon, 55, were kidnapped during a report for RFI and then killed immediately followingwards, on November 2, 2013 near Kidal, a few months following the start of the French operation Serval intended to counter jihadists threatening to take Bamako.
This double assassination was claimed by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), but light has never been shed on the precise circumstances of the tragedy, due in particular to defense secrecy in France and the deterioration of relations between Paris and Bamako where the military took power in 2020.
Tuesday, Marie Dosé, lawyer for the association “Friends of Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon”, declared that they “were followed and monitored for much longer than a few hours before their kidnapping”.
“We know that there existed a much larger network than the four commandos and two sponsors” initially identified, she added.
A scholarship and an association in their honor
This tenth anniversary was commemorated simultaneously Thursday evening in Abidjan and Paris, with debates on press freedom in the Sahel – a region ravaged by jihadist violence – and the preview screening of a documentary entitled “Sahel, the desert some information”.
In Abidjan, the two winners of the “Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon Scholarship” were also designated, created in 2014 to “pay tribute to the passion and expertise of the two reporters” and “to train young radio professionals in Africa”, according to RFI. In the journalists category, they are Joseph Kahongo from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), aged 27, and in the technicians category, Ange Joël Agbla, 23 years old, from Benin.
Referring to the situation of the press in his country where the profession of journalist can be dangerous, Joseph Kahongo said that being a winner was “proof that the torch can be passed”, which “reignites hope”.
Selected from ten journalists and ten radio technicians from French-speaking Africa who received two weeks of training in Abidjan, the two winners will benefit from a one-month internship at the radio headquarters in the Paris suburbs.
On the occasion of this tenth anniversary, RFI wanted to bring the 18 winners of previous scholarships to Abidjan. They created the “Dupont-Verlon Network for Investigative Journalism” intended to promote “respect for freedom of expression, the right to information, freedom of the press”, as well as “security journalists”. In a message to the winners, Ghislaine Dupont’s mother, Marie-Solange Poinsot, very moved, said that she agreed to be “the godmother” of this new association.
Last week, RFI commemorated the assassination, on October 21, 2003, of another of its reporters, Jean Hélène, shot dead by a police officer while he was waiting near police headquarters in Abidjan for the release of opponents. to the regime of the then Ivorian president, Laurent Gbagbo. His brother, Thierry Baldensperger, attended the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the deaths of Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon in Abidjan.
With AFP
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