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ZIMBABWE:
Media crackdown gets worse
Reporters
Without Borders - Reporters sans frontières
June
10, 2003
Reporters Without
Borders today deplored the arrest and beating by government supporters
of radio journalists Shorai Katiwa and Martin Chimenya
and called on the government to ensure the media could operate freely
in Zimbabwe.
The two reporters, of the pirate radio station Voice of the People
(VOP), were seized on 2 June by war veterans and young supporters
of President Robert Mugabe's African National Union Patriotic Front
(ZANU-PF) who interrogated them, took away their mobile phones and
tape-recorders and beat them after accusing them of belonging to
the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
They were then taken to a police station, where they admitted that
they sent their reports from a computer at the home of VOP
coordinator John Masuku. Police then went there and confiscated
the computer and the station's office records. They found nothing
suspicious, so returned the items and freed the journalists.
Police on 3 June harassed two other journalists, Luke Tamborinyoka
and Precious Shumba, both of The Daily News, the country's
only independent daily paper, and made them crawl on a hard surface.
Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard
denounced the climate of repression and lawlessness in which independent
journalists were obliged to work and called on Mugabe to investigate
the attacks on the reporters and punish those responsible. "Journalists
must be able to work in complete freedom and security," he said.
Zimbabwe is the most repressive country in Southern Africa towards
the media. VOP is one of the only two radio stations to have
got round the ban of privately-owned stations, by broadcasting on
short-wave from the Netherlands. It is also one of the few independent
media to reach the rural population since it broadcasts in the country's
two main languages, Shona and Ndebele. Its offices in Harare were
attacked last August.
Reporters Without Borders also condemned last week's destruction
by government supporters of several thousand copies of The Daily
News and three other independent papers, The Financial Gazette,
The Standard and The Zimbabwe Independent. The Associated
Newspapers Group (ANZ), which publishes The Daily News, said
more than 2,500 copies of the paper had been destroyed on 2 June
alone.
The organisation
also deplored physical attacks on Daily News readers by ZANU-PF
supporters and noted that section 20 of the Zimbabwean constitution
guaranteed freedom of opinion and expression.
For more
information, contact:
Reporters
sans frontières
Africa
desk
Email: africa@rsf.org
Website: www.rsf.org
Tel: 33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: 33 1 45 23 11 51
5, rue Geoffroy-Marie
75009 Paris
FRANCE
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