MEP Maxette Pirbakas condemns the treatment of a journalist by RCI Guadeloupe. In a press release issued on 11 December, Maxette Pirbakas, Member of the European Parliament, expressed her outrage at the removal of journalist Barbara OLIVIER-ZANDRONIS from the airwaves of RCI Guadeloupe.

According to Ms Pirbakas, the decision follows an interview she conducted on 8 December with a candidate on the election campaign trail. She believes that Barbara OLIVIER-ZANDRONIS was dismissed by her superiors “for her professionalism and the quality of her contributions” during the interview.

The MP condemned the “brutal treatment” meted out to the journalist as well as an “arbitrary act of authority that defies press freedom” by RCI Guadeloupe. She also found the radio station’s justification for removing the journalist from the airwaves to be “clumsy” and “unfounded”.

As a Member of the European Parliament for Overseas France and national president of the RPFOM, Pirbakas condemns the “dismissal without serious reason” of Barbara OLIVIER-ZANDRONIS. She is calling for her “immediate reinstatement” on RCI Guadeloupe.

For the time being, the management of the public radio station has not officially reacted to this scathing statement by a leading political figure.

Full statement by Maxette Pirbakas:

I am stunned by the brutal treatment inflicted on journalist Barbara OLIVIER-ZANDRONIS, on RCI Guadeloupe, following an interview with a candidate on the election campaign trail on 8 December. Faced with the pugnacity of the journalist, who appears to have taken her interviewer at his word, the management of RCI unfortunately chose the path of “gratuitous repression” by removing from the air a presenter of RCI’s 13h programme who is appreciated by the public and her colleagues for her professionalism and the quality of her contributions.

The clumsy, unjustified and unfounded response by the media’s management to justify an arbitrary act of authority that defies press freedom seems to make RCI, contrary to what its deputy director Hervé de Haro claims to AFP, not an “opinion radio station” but a “politicised and biased radio station” that defies journalistic ethics.

In my capacity as Member of the European Parliament for Overseas France and National President of the RPFOM, I denounce the dismissal of Mrs Barbara OLIVIER-ZANDRONIS for no serious reason, and I add my voice to all those who have spoken out to demand her immediate reinstatement.

Signed in Strasbourg on 11 December 2023