celtnet.org.uk

2010-06-15 12:04

Niamey - The main private radio station in uranium-rich northern Niger was on air again Monday after being closed two years earlier by the deposed president following broadcasts linked to the Tuareg rebellion.

"The National Observatory of Communication has given us permission and we have already started transmitting again," said the head of private Sahara FM, Ahmed Raliou, in the northern capital Agadez.

"It is very good news," said Raliou, who is also the regional Radio France International (RFI).

The Observatory is a media regulation body established by the military junta that overthrew president Mamadou Tandja on February 18.

Before being bought out in 2004, Sahara FM belonged to the head of the Tuareg rebellion, Rhissa Ag Boula, who announced in January 2008 a campaign against uranium mining, including by French state-controlled nuclear company Areva, in the north.

Tandja's regime shut down Sahara FM in April 2008, with one official then accusing it of being "a dangerous radio, spreading calls for ethnic hatred".

It was also accused of broadcasting information "which undermined the morale" of soldiers fighting Tuareg rebels.

Raliou rejected the allegations, saying his station had only aired accounts from people who said they had been "beaten and maltreated by soldiers" close to Agadez.

It has also broadcast extracts from an article that appeared in a local newspaper about the risks of radioactive contagion of the groundwater from uranium extracted in the area, he said.

Deeply poor Niger is the world's third largest uranium producer.

Under Tandja, media coverage of rebel activities in the north was strictly forbidden.

The junta has vowed to restore democracy in Niger at the end of a transition period of about one year from taking power. It inaugurated a new independent national electoral commission on Monday.

In March it reopened the national Press House, also shut down by Tandja, and adopted new rules decriminalising offences by the media.