KIRIBATI: AFP journalist declared 'undesirable'

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PRESS FREEDOM ALERT
5 September 2000

KIRIBATI: AFP JOURNALIST DECLARED 'UNDESIRABLE'

In a letter sent to the President of Kiribati (an island in Micronesia), Teburoro Tito, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) protested against the refusal to grant accreditation to Michael Field, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalist based in New Zealand.

The organisation asked the president to go back on his decision and to grant accreditation to the journalist so that he could cover the Forum of Pacific countries Summit.

Robert Ménard, general secretary of Reporters Sans Frontières, asked the president of the Republic of Kiribati to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which among other things protects freedom of expression.

According to the information collected by Reporters Sans Frontières, at the beginning of September the government of Kiribati refused to grant accreditation to Michael Field, AFP journalist, for the Forum of sixteen Pacific countries Summit, on Tarawa Island (the main island of the archipelago) in October 2000.

In December 1999 this journalist was banned and forced to leave the Island, after an article about problems of insalubrity in Tarawa.

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