has resulted in intimidation, threats and litigation. case dragged on through the courts and was still pending at the end of 2017. On 19 April, the Court of Appeal upheld an earlier decision by the High Court and turned down the application of a teacher who had challenged his dismissal from employment on the grounds that it violated his constitutional right to freedom of expression. It has been reported that before Mokone was arrested, the Attorney General had issued a letter labelled “Top Secret” demanding that the Sunday Standard retract the story and publish an apology in its next edition or criminal proceedings would be instituted against the newspaper, its editor and the journalist under whose name the article had appeared. The teacher was dismissed after he published an opinion piece in a newspaper in May 2011 on the country’s political situation, following a national strike by public sector employees. In February 2012, a disciplinary hearing had found the teacher guilty of contravening section 34(a) of the Public Service Act.3 From the onset President Khama has been clear about his disdain for the media. It is against this background that 2015, as the year that spelt doom for MISA Botswana in terms of funds and funding, cast a long shadow of apathy among media practitioners, much to the joy of the enemies of freedom of expression. PRINT MEDIA One of the most prominent cases in 2017 was that of the popularly known ‘Sedition Case’ against the editor of the Sunday Standard newspaper, Outsa Mokone. He was first arrested in September 2014 on charges of sedition arising from a story carried in the newspaper’s edition of 13 August 2014 titled “President hit in car accident while driving alone at night.’ The story also carried a statement by government spokesman Jeff Ramsay denying that the President had been in the car but confirming that a presidential vehicle was involved. The 3 Amnesty International Report 2017/2018 32 So This is Democracy? 2017 The newspaper was given five days within which to retract and apologise for the story, but the police had already obtained a warrant of arrest against Mokone on the day that the demand for the retraction and the apology had been requested. Mokone was arrested on 8 September upon his return from South Africa where he had gone to visit his family. Mokone’s lawyers subsequently sought their client’s release before the High Court where proceedings gave rise to constitutional issues on three grounds that 1. Mokone had been unlawfully arrested. 2. He had been denied access to his lawyers during his detention. 3. As a criminal offence, sedition violated Section 12 of the Constitution of Botswana that protects freedom of expression, and by extension, of the media. The difficulty with this matter is that while it was certainly the most positive turn of events since 2014, Mokone’s could be a temporary respite in that he gained his escape only on the technical grounds that the Penal Code required the State to charge him within six months and was unlikely to proceed with the matter because the stipulated period had lapsed. Significantly, the court did not deal with the crucial matter of whether se-