Tags
CDC, Coalition of Concerned Liberians, Front Page Africa, Gambia, Hunter College, Liberian civil war, Liberty Party, Rodney Sieh, Unity Party
I read this article on Front Page Africa (FPA) with great interest. For those who don’t know, FPA has been ordered closed by the government of Liberia following the inability of its editor to pay 1.5 million USD to a former minister who successfully sued for libel and its editor has been arrested. Read about the situation in the words of Rodney Sieh, the editor, here. It’s certainly not his first brush with West African governments, he ended up fleeing the Gambia after escaping Liberia’s civil war when the new government of Jammeh became displeased with his coverage.
Sieh, who was educated at Hunter College in New York, lived in the US during Liberia’s war and FPA has solid coverage of the Liberian Diaspora in the US, in which the DC area figures strongly.
The article I mention to open this post speaks of a meeting to discuss corruption in Silver Spring, MD, convened by the Coalition of Concerned Liberians. It’s fascinating to see that three of the country’s main political parties (the ruling Unity Party, the CDC, and the Liberty Party) had the Chairs (or in one case a senior adviser) of their US branches present to deliver remarks.
The phenomenon of US branches of African political parties is not something I have read much about. Hopefully in the not too distant future, that is an issue I can examine on these pages. I have covered it once before, very briefly.
Africa in DC 