LISBON (Reuters) -Portugal’s government on Friday condemned the expulsion of reporting teams of state news agency Lusa and two African units of broadcaster RTP from Guinea-Bissau in the run-up to a postponed election scheduled to be held in November in the West African country.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement it had “immediately summoned the ambassador of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau in Lisbon for explanations and clarifications” for a meeting that will take place on Saturday.
“The Portuguese government strongly condemns the decision of the government of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau to order the removal of Lusa, RTP Africa, and RDP Africa from that country and their respective termination of broadcasts,” it said, calling the move “highly reprehensible and unjustifiable”.
No explanations for the move were provided by either Guinea-Bissau, which announced the expulsion in a government decree earlier on Friday, or Portugal. The representatives of the media outlets have until August 19 to leave the country.
Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embalo said in March he would run for a second term, backtracking on earlier promises to step down and stoking tensions over postponed elections, with his opponents saying that his term expired in February.
A dispute over when Embalo’s presidential term, which began in 2020, should end has heightened tensions that risk unrest in the former Portuguese colony with a history of military coups.
On August 7, Embalo, a former army general, appointed by decree a new prime minister, Braima Camara – the third premier since Embalo took office in 2020 – replacing Rui Duarte de Barros.
In March, a political mission of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), deployed to help reach a consensus on how to conduct the election, said it had to leave “following threats by H.E. Umaro Sissoco Embalo to expel it”.
The presidential and legislative elections are scheduled to be held on November 23.
(Reporting by Andrei Khalip in Lisbon and Alberto Dabo in Bissau; Editing by Paul Simao)
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