Algeria: There are no journalists imprisoned in the country

Algerian Minister of Communication, Hamid Grine has disputed the content of the latest EU report on press freedom in Algeria.

Broadcast on the eve of the meeting in Brussels on Monday, the European Union report denounced attacks on the media in Algeria.

The Algerian media landscape, renowned in the region for its dynamism, was the subject in 2015 and 2016 of the closure of two private television stations and the imprisonment of several journalists, particularly in cases of defamation

However the Minister refuted the report’s findings yesterday. “Article 50 of the Constitution amended at the beginning of 2016 makes it clear that the offense of the press cannot be sanctioned by a custodial sentence. This is a great democratic advance for our country. Today, I say: there are no journalists imprisoned for press offenses in Algeria.

“There is only one television channel under foreign law whose premises were sealed in October 2015. It was illegally operating, broadcasting subversive content and defaming,” Grine explained regarding programme monitoring.

Amnesty International report: Algeria arrests those ‘peacefully criticising the government’

“There is not a single country in the European Union that tolerates on its soil some fifty illegal offices of foreign-language television channels. That is the threshold of tolerance we have. There are even countries in the European Union that have closed foreign channels when they are duly authorised. They did it for their own reasons,” the minister further added.

“At the Ministry of Communication, we do not have the same appreciation of the reality of the freedom of the press in Algeria as the European Union,” Grine concluded.