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Human rights abuses
Media Monitoring
Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-05
Monday February 2nd - Sunday February
8th 2004
The government-controlled media's tendency
to portray a picture of peace and tranquility in the country has
resulted in these media ignoring the continued erosion of basic
human rights by overzealous ZANU PF fanatics, security force members
and the government through its promulgation of unconstitutional
laws.
The responsibility has been completely
left to the private media. For instance, this week SW Radio Africa
carried 17 stories, which reported
18 cases of rights abuses. Studio 7 had
four stories highlighting two incidents of rights violations. ZBC
had none. The trend was similar in the print media. While the private
papers published 12 reports on human rights abuses, the government
Press only carried a single story. Even then, the report - on police
thwarting "an illegal demonstration" by the National Constitutional
Assembly (NCA) - was in the form of a brief buried inside The Herald
(5/2). More conspicuous however, was the paper's failure to reveal
the violence with which the police broke up the peaceful protest,
aimed at pressing government to adopt a new Constitution for the
country. Studio 7 and SW Radio Africa (04/02), The Daily News
and The Daily Mirror (5/2) alerted their audiences to the police's
brutality.
They reported that armed anti-riot police
had severely beaten NCA chairman Lovemore Madhuku, whom they allegedly
left for dead in the bush outside Harare city centre. The police
were also reported to have beaten up 13 other NCA youths and set
"vicious dogs on them". Only the private media carried civil society's
condemnation of the police brutality. The Zimbabwe Independent
(6/2), for example, quoted the Human Rights Forum describing the
police action as "barbaric" and "totally unjustified." adding that
it "contravened sections of the Constitution let alone the Code
of Conduct of the ZRP itself". The paper also quoted the Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC), which described the incident as " further
evidence of the intolerance by the Mugabe regime." Far from seeing
anything amiss, The Herald (6/2) shamefully celebrated Madhuku's
beating in its comment Ex-convict Madhuku playing to the gallery.
The paper accused the NCA leader of "engaging
in conduct that he knew would invite the immediate and justified
wrath of the law- enforcement agents". It added sarcastically of
other arrested NCA activists, ".the demonstrators - obviously in
search of cheap martyrdom - elbowed each other for a place in police
vans". Moreover, instead of chastising the police for their brutality
the paper chose to advise the protesters "to be more tactful in
dealing with the Madhukus of this world" because "pictures of a
bandaged and bloodstained Madhuku after alleged scuffles with the
police only serve to make the ex-convict look important and look
as if he has a legitimate cause."
But despite this brutal assault, Simbi
Mubako, Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United States, on Studio 7
(04/02), that Zimbabwe respected human rights because they were
"well protected in our constitution and in our law" and as such
the police and the courts dealt with human rights violations. To
rebut Mubako's claims, SW Radio Africa (04/02) exposed the police
complicity in the perpetration of rights abuses in Chipinge. It
reported that ZANU PF supporters who assaulted members of the opposition
were allegedly using "a police vehicle driven by an officer in police
uniform in the door-to-door attacks."
Visit the MMPZ
fact sheet
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