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June 8th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Two leading Gabonese activists and some 40 others were arrested as they tried to hold a “Counter-Forum of Indignants” alongside the New York Forum Africa opening Friday in Libreville.
Marc Ona, an award-winning environmental activist, and Gregory Ngbwa Mintsa, spokesman of Gabon‘s Indignants’ Front, were detained before their event could kick off.
Ona was released after being held for several hours, and told AFP he expected the others to be freed as well.
An interior ministry source said the activist had been arrested because he had behaved aggressively to a policeman, something which Ona denied.
“I have been freed. I expect the other people, 19 men and a score of women to be released too,” he said.
Earlier Ona said that when he arrived at the venue for their event in a private college “the police asked me to identify myself and they arrested me.”
He said they were taken to the sprawling police barracks of Fopi on the outskirts of Libreville.
The three-day New York Forum Africa, to be attended by Gabonese President Ali Bongo, is dedicated to development issues across the continent and features senior business executives and politicians from Africa and beyond.
But local campaigners have dismissed it as a public relations exercise that does not address the real needs of Gabon.
Ona, recipient of the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize, said he had received a letter informing him that the counter-forum was banned, but decided “not to give in.”
“They were arrested because they wanted to hold a banned demonstration,” said interior ministry spokesman Jean-Eric Nziengui Mangala, without giving the exact number of arrests.
Fellow campaigner Georges Mpaga, who has frequently been arrested along with Ona, told AFP he and other activists planned to report to the police headquarters and hand themselves in.
“If they are arresting Marc Ona, then let them arrest everyone,” he said.
The ministry source said, “The indignants’ movement does not legally exist, it’s a group which formed only a few days ago, before the forum.
“There is freedom of expression in Gabon but they made no application to demonstrate… They’re just trying to make a noise.”
Ona won the Goldman Prize for his “efforts to publicly expose the unlawful agreements behind a huge mining project threatening the sensitive ecosystems of Gabon’s equatorial rainforests,” the organisation said on its website.
Confined to a wheelchair since a childhood bout of polio, he also campaigns on disability rights issues and for greater Internet access in Africa.
Ngbwa Mintsa was detained with Ona for 13 days in 2009 under the regime of Ali Bongo’s father Omar.
Ona, Mpaga and Ngbwa Mintsa were accused in 2009 of exceeding their roles as members of civil society by then interior minister Andre Mba Obame, who has since joined the opposition.
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