Mali’s private media have launched a news blackout after an editor was arrested for publishing a letter that purportedly to expose the poor conditions of soldiers fighting Islamist terrorists in the north of the country to the president.

The Le Republicain editor Boukary Daou was arrested last week Wednesday and has yet not been charged with any wrong doing and still being held by the authorities.

In the news items that was published by the Le Republicain newspaper, the soldiers in their open letter to the president pointed out lacked of equipment, rations in food and among many things they considered are preventing them from fully discharging their duties.

The letter also complained that the military top brass were living in comfort in Bamako while their colleagues suffered on the frontline.

Captain Amadou Sanogo who staged the coup d’état last year was recently named the head of a government committee to oversee reforms in the military and is he is allegedly to be paid about $7,800 a month which some officers in the army think is unfair.

“Do we have to stage a coup to be rewarded and recognized as a good soldier?” the soldiers asked in the letter published by the Le Republicain newspaper.

Interim Mali president Dioncounda Traore has not yet commented on the arrest or the strike by the media which many believe is leaving a bad image for the interim government.

But Communications Minister Manga Dembele said Mr. Daou acted irresponsibly and unpatriotically by publishing the soldiers’ open letter to the president.

The striking journalists said they did not expect their colleagues working at the state-owned broadcaster and newspaper to join their indefinite protest.

The journalists and media proprietors say they have faced a series of arbitrary arrests and beatings since the coup.

Meanwhile, the UN’s human rights body said on Tuesday that its preliminary investigations show Malian soldiers have been carrying out retaliatory attacks on ethnic groups perceived to have supported rebel groups, according to the AFP News Agency in Bamako.

“The situation has been exacerbated by the propagation of inflammatory messages, including through the media, stigmatizing members of these communities, thousands of whom have reportedly fled out of fear of reprisal by the Malian army,” the agency quotes deputy UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kyung-wha Kang, as saying.

Issaka Adams / NationalTurk Africa News

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