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International
relations
Media
Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-47
Monday November 22nd - Sunday November 28th
2004
THE official
media’s complicity in the systematic concealment of the government’s
human rights excesses from the public replayed itself in the way
they obfuscated fresh appeals by some European countries and the
US asking the UN to intervene and address the abuses in Zimbabwe.
These media
narrowly celebrated news that most developing countries in the UN
General Assembly, led by South Africa, had outvoted their counterparts
92:72 against the adoption of a draft resolution condemning Zimbabwe’s
poor human rights record without fully informing their audiences
about the substance of the motion, its contents or relevance to
the rights crisis in the country.
In fact, the
official media merely used the latest development to reinforce the
authorities’ specious claims that the reports alleging rights abuses
in Zimbabwe were being contrived by its former colonial master,
Britain, in its bid to oust government from power.
The Sunday
Mail (28/11) even claimed that it was such ‘defeats’ like the
blocked draft resolution on Zimbabwe that had resulted in Britain
"increasingly seeking to engage Harare in dialogue to
solve the bilateral problem".
But such unsubstantiated
claims were by no means new.
Just before
the UN blocked the draft resolution on Zimbabwe, the government
media diverted the public’s attention from the contents of the resolution
by cobbling up conspiracy theories on the matter.
For instance,
The Herald (23/11) claimed that the resolution, which among
other things obliged Zimbabwe to create conducive conditions for
the holding of democratic elections and invite independent international
observers for the March 2005 elections, was part of the "desperate"
manoeuvres by the British-led West "to sneak their observers
into the country" to discredit next year’s elections.
The paper claimed
that government’s proposed controversial electoral reforms and the
acquittal of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai on treason charges were
eloquent testimonies of the existence of democracy and the rule
of law in the country, contrary to the claims contained in the West’s
"sponsored" UN resolution.
No attempt was
made to honestly reconcile such one-sided claims with reality.
However, coverage
of the issue by SW Radio Africa (25/11), Studio 7 (25/11) and The
Daily Mirror (26/11) was more sober. For example, while SW Radio
Africa reported Amnesty International (AI) arguing that the UN’s
"no action motion" that allowed Zimbabwe
to escape investigation by the world body "doesn’t help
in improving the human rights situation" in the country,
Studio 7 quoted a South African official defending the blocking
of the resolution on the basis that it was "confrontational
and would only exacerbate the situation (in Zimbabwe)."
Certainly, while
the government media were exploiting this development to spruce
up government’s human rights record, the authorities were ironically
in the news for trying to bar more than a dozen foreign journalists
from covering England’s current One Day International Cricket tour
to Zimbabwe.
Typically, The
Herald and Chronicle (25 & 26/11) tried to suffocate
this latest display of government’s intolerance of media freedom,
one of the concerns raised by the proposed UN draft resolution.
The two papers carried brief reports on the matter and simply smothered
the facts surrounding the issue. This contrasted sharply with the
detailed and balanced reports carried by the private media, such
as The Daily Mirror (25/11), The Financial Gazette
(25/11) and Zimbabwe Independent (26/11).
Moreover, contrary
to the government media’s selective coverage of the authorities’
escape from UN censure, the private media actually revealed that
the South African labour union, COSATU, and that country’s Communist
Party (CP) remained unsettled by Zimbabwe’s hostile political environment.
SW Radio Africa (25 & 27/11), The Daily Mirror (26/11)
and The Standard (28/11) reported that the SA labour body
had resolved to send another fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe following
the ill-fated deportation of its first one last month. This would
be in addition to COSATU staging a series of demonstrations outside
all Zimbabwean embassies in the region to protest against the deportation
and the human rights violations in Zimbabwe.
The government
media blacked out this development, including Studio 7’s (23/11)
revelations that the CP had called for "an end to political
violence in Zimbabwe", saying that the "existing
political climate in Zimbabwe and the continued use of state repression
to close down the media, judiciary and opposition"
was not conducive to the holding of free and fair elections in 2005.
Similarly, The
Standard reported that AI had called on government to withdraw
the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Bill saying the proposed law was
"flawed" and should be "appropriately
reviewed".
The government
media continued to evade these matters.
Rather, Power
FM and Radio Zimbabwe (24/11, 6am) passively quoted Foreign Affairs
Minister Stan Mudenge blaming Zimbabwe’s problems on the West, particularly
Britain, which it accused of already scheming "not to
recognise next year’s elections".
All media, however,
failed to either inform their audiences on the EU-ACP meeting or
investigate why ZANU PF MP Kumbirai Kangai, banned from travelling
to Europe under the EU’s targeted sanctions regime, had failed to
travel to the Netherlands for the meeting as revealed by The
Daily Mirror (25/11). This was despite the fact that the Netherlands
had reportedly issued him with a visa despite protests from the
EU.
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