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Information rights under threat
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-12
Monday March 22nd - Sunday March 28th 2004

Barely a week after Information Minister Jonathan Moyo was quoted in The Herald (10/3) threatening local journalists and foreign correspondents for allegedly selling stories tarnishing the image of Zimbabwe to the outside world, the authorities pounced on an independent film maker Simon Bright. Moyo's threats followed the screening of a damning documentary on Zimbabwe's controversial National Youth Service (NYS) training camps in the British Broadcasting Corporation's Panorama programme whose findings government has vehemently refuted via the media it controls. For example, in the week under review ZTV rescheduled its evening programming for March 23rd and 24th to carry special programmes rebutting Panorama's findings.

The Herald's belated report of Bright's arrest (25/3) revealed that the authorities had arrested him on March 19 merely on "suspicion" that he was involved in the production of the BBC documentary. His lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa was quoted saying, "Bright was released on Monday afternoon after being charged under (the Public Order and Security Act) for communicating 'a statement, which is wholly or materially false'."

However, the paper was not specific about which section of POSA covered such a crime. This only appeared in The Daily Mirror (26/3). The paper quoted Mtetwa saying her client was being charged under Section 15 (2) (a) (i) "which deals with the publication of material that the state feels is likely to cause alarm and despondency and the other issues that the state feels is false."

Besides highlighting the State's paranoia, Bright's arrest revealed how the authorities can still resort to POSA to curtail freedom of expression despite the annulment of a similar section in AIPPA, which criminalized the publication of "falsehoods". In its judgment, the Supreme Court ruled that Section 80 (1), (a), (b) and (c) of AIPPA, was "patently oppressive". However, none of the media captured this worrying fact.

It is therefore important that democratic forces in Zimbabwe's civic society challenge the constitutionality of Section 15 of POSA.

Bright was not the only victim of the government's determination to stamp out independent sources of information. SW Radio Africa (23/3), Studio 7 (25/3) and The Standard (28/3) reported that Bulawayo based organizations, Radio Dialogue and Bulawayo Agenda were raided by the police in search of "subversive material".

The issue was given topicality when The Herald (24/3) reported that Harare regional magistrate Virginia Sithole barred the media from publishing evidence revealing the identity of a high-ranking politician implicated in the alleged illegal gold dealings involving Mark Mathew Burden, who is being charged with breaching the Gold Trade Act.

Magistrate Sithole gagged the media on the grounds that identifying the politician was irrelevant to Burden's trial.

While The Herald did not analyze the implications of such a blatant attempt to stifle important public information, The Standard (28/3), quoted analysts criticizing Sithole's gag as a "major blow to freedom of the Press", adding that it made a mockery of government's anti-graft crusade.

The paper revealed that Burden had implicated ZANU PF stalwart Emmerson Mnangagwa but claimed the police had tortured him into making the confession.

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