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Email under threat?
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted of the Weekly Media Update 2004-22
Monday May 31st – Sunday June 6th 2004

The authorities’ obsessive fear of alternative sources of information manifested itself again at the beginning of the week under review with news that government is trying to force Internet Service Providers (ISP) to monitor individual e-mails and ‘shop’ all sources of "objectionable" and "anti-national" messages (The Standard, 30/5).

Although The Standard reported initial resistance from the country’s ISPs, the government media simply ignored this important development towards the entrenchment of a police state. The Zimbabwe Independent (4/6) followed up the story quoting information technology (IT) consultants as saying government could only interfere with e-mails originating from or destined for local ‘zw’ domains. IT expert Robert Ndlovu was quoted saying it would be impossible for government to snoop into e-mails that used international domains such as Yahoo and Hotmail. Said Ndlovu: "As long as you use international e-mails to send sensitive information, there is no way government can open them, unless of course you give them your password".

Similar views appeared on the radio stations, Studio 7 and SW Radio Africa (2/6). The Daily Mirror (3/6) reported that ISPs had no capacity to implement government’s demands. The private media also viewed government’s attempt to gag the electronic "information highway" as part of its campaign to stifle all alternative news and information outlets. For example, the Independent’s Editor’s Memo pointed out that the government’s move "reflects a heightening of paranoia felt in the upper echelons of power" adding that "instead of regarding the Internet as an instrument of knowledge and freedom" the authorities saw "it as a tool of "imperialists"’.

Such evident intolerance of alternative sources of information also prompted the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) to adopt a resolution condemning the country’s media laws, which it observed were meant "to protect President Mugabe from criticism while he is able to make unrestrained attacks on civil society and his critics in the media" (the Independent). WAN was also reported calling for the "elimination of the repressive provisions of AIPPA, together with POSA" and that "other attempts to silence independent media" should cease "immediately".

Predictably, the government media ignored this latest condemnation of the country’s repressive media environment.

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