CORRECTION: In a previous headline for this article, the location of the prison was misstated. The prison is in Liberia. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

After weeks in prison and days of being guarded by officers in a hospital, Liberian journalist Rodney Sieh was given a 30-day “compassionate release.” 

Suffering from an illness that officials have not yet elaborated on, Sieh was released last week for the first time since Aug. 23 by the Liberian Ministry of Justice, said Ken Harper, an assistant professor of multimedia photography and design at Syracuse University. Harper had started a campaign to free Sieh, as the two had worked together in a program titled “Together Liberia,” which provided multimedia training for Liberian journalists.

Sieh is bound to Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, under the grounds of the compassionate release, according to an Oct. 10 Reporters Without Borders press release. Compassionate release is a legal system by which inmates can be released early from prison on special grounds, such as illness.

While the release is short of what many believe to be justice, Harper said it is progress.

“It’s a big battle, because people are really angry over things he’s reported on,” Harper said. “It’s a difficult environment to do anything in journalism there.”

Sieh worked for The Post-Standard from 2000 to 2003 before eventually establishing FrontPage Africa in his native Liberia. The newspaper became known for its exposés on unfair practices by governing officials. When millions of dollars went missing from the agriculture ministry, Sieh and FrontPage Africa accused the Minister of Agriculture of corruption based on reports by Liberia’s independent General Auditing Commission. The minister resigned then sued Sieh for defamation of character. The specific law that Sieh was charged with violating is more than 150 years old and sentences perpetrators to 5,000 years in prison, he said.

“They’ve come a far ways from the dark days of journalism there, when they used to just kill you, burn your paper down,” said Harper. “Now they’re using the court system, outdated legal maneuvering and laws that were really meant to enslave people.”

The Supreme Court in Liberia demanded that FrontPage Africa be discontinued, both in print and digital form; that Sieh apologize to the accused minister and for him to pay for the prosecution’s legal fees. This, on top of the $1.5 million Sieh was fined for being found guilty, Harper said.

Fines like these are expensive in Liberia, Harper said, where people make on average $1 per day and reporters make $30 or $50 a month.

In September, Roy Gutterman, director of the Tully Center for Free Speech, participated in a summit in New York with the president of Liberia, her delegates, Sieh’s lawyers and members of non-governmental organizations, such as Amnesty International.

“The fact that they’re even having these meetings does at least say they’re serious about certain democratic principles,” Gutterman said.

Last January, Jessica Suarez, a graduate student in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, worked with Sieh and other FrontPage Africa writers when she and several other students accompanied Harper to Liberia. Since finding out about his imprisonment, Suarez and other students have created a video outlining ways students can become informed of the misconduct in Sieh’s trial.

“Through his leadership and influence, stories that were previously untold in the country are being brought to the forefront (particularly stories related to social issues affecting women and children),” Suarez said in an email. “We take for granted the freedom of the press in our own country and it is our responsibility to promote this right across the world.”

Though Sieh could still return to prison, Harper said he feels the uproar caused after Sieh’s incarceration is enough to propel legal action. Even with this potential progress, Harper said, the controversy around Sieh illustrates a deeper difficulty for Liberians to fight corruption.

“Journalism there isn’t respected, it’s always been viewed as a mouthpiece of a senator or, a rich warlord, or whomever,” Harper said. “It’s going to take a long time, generations, for real storytelling to happen, for people to be held accountable for their deeds.”

Published on October 17, 2013 at 1:28 am