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International relations and Human rights
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2005-15
Monday April 25th - May 1st 2005

THE re-election of Zimbabwe to the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) provided ZBH with the opportunity to further defend the country's poor human rights record. The government-controlled broadcaster carried three reports on the matter. All the reports celebrated this latest development and used it to reinforce official claims that allegations of human rights violations in the country were baseless and only emanated from Western countries that were against Zimbabwe's land reforms.

It was hardly surprising therefore that the broadcaster ignored incidents of continued human rights violations which appeared on Studio 7. The private station carried 10 stories on human rights issues. Of these, six stories were on fresh incidents of rights violations, including the murder of an MDC activist while three were on the US and civic organisations' condemnation of Zimbabwe's re-election to the UNHRC. The remainder was on government's efforts to have the African Commission on Human and People's Rights postpone hearing a case in which human rights activist Gabriel Shumba is suing the Zimbabwean authorities over his alleged torture by the police. The victims of the rights abuses ranged from MDC supporters, civic society to members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) while the perpetrators were either state security agents or ZANU PF activists.

The trend was similar in the print media. Out of the 11 reports on rights violations published by the Press, nine were in the private papers while only two were in the government-controlled Press. The two government papers' stories, which appeared in The Herald and Manica Post (29/4), stemmed from an incident in which MDC supporters allegedly beat up ZANU PF supporters in Chipinge South in protest against the disputed March election results. The papers cited the police attributing the outbreak of the violence to an alleged report by the private radio station, Studio 7, which claimed that the election process that resulted in ZANU PF candidate for the constituency Enock Porisingazi winning had been fraught with irregularities.

These papers, however, ignored 11 cases of rights abuses, which included four incidents of politically motivated harassment and violence and one case of murder that were recorded in nine reports carried by the private Press. Like on Studio 7, the police could not readily confirm some of the cases reported by the private papers. For example, while The Standard quoted MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi claiming that suspected ZANU PF activists had allegedly murdered the party's chairman for Ward 6 in Karoi, Ebrahim Moffat, the same paper quoted police spokesman Oliver Mandipaka saying he could not confirm the murder since he was attending ZIFT. Other efforts to contact another police spokesman, Wayne Bvudzijena, were "unsuccessful", said the paper. Notably, Bvudzijena and other police officers that Studio 7 reportedly contacted over the murder case were non-committal.

But while the government Press turned a blind eye to these rights abuses, especially the clampdown on ZCTU leaders by State security agents ahead of the May Day celebrations, it diverted public attention from the matter by devoting six stories to accusing the labour body of deserting workers and engaging in politics. And in a bid to gloss over the isolation of Zimbabwe mainly over its poor human rights record and bad governance, the government-controlled Press carried 25 stories that sought to superficially depict the country as enjoying cordial relations with the rest of the world. Visits by Mozambican President Guebuza and the South African National Defence Forces chief, General Sphiwe Nyanda were conveniently used to spruce up Zimbabwe's tattered international image. So was the UN's invitation to Zimbabwe to send its army officers to participate in a military observer mission in Southern Sudan.

ZTV and Power FM also carried 12 reports that conveniently used supportive statements by Guebuza and outgoing South African ambassador Jeremiah Ndou to give the impression that Zimbabwe has the support of the international community. But the government media was mum on plans by the US to widen its targeted sanctions against the Zimbabwean leadership in the aftermath of another disputed poll as reported by The Daily Mirror (27/4) and Sunday Mirror

(1/5). The official media also largely downplayed the criticism levelled against government by the US, Canada and Australia over its re-election to the UN body as compared to the Zimbabwe Independent. Neither did it tell its audiences, as did the Independent, that UN secretary-general Kofi Annan would abolish the "controversial body" later this year anyway.

Rather, The Saturday Herald buried all these concerns in glowing comments by Zimbabwe's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, Boniface Chidyausiku, who described the re-election as "a triumph for Zimbabwean democracy".

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