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VOP
workers arrested
MISA-Zimbabwe
December 16, 2005
Three VOP workers
are being detained at Harare Central Police Station following the
raid of the radio station's offices in Harare on 15 December 2005.
Jacob Mafume
of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) confirmed the arrest
of the three workers. Mafume said he was preparing the necessary
legal papers to secure their release.
Background
Police details from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID),
raided the VOP Offices yesterday and confiscated equipment and other
materials from the station. Shorai Kariwa, a VOP senior officer
told MISA-Zimbabwe that the police had confiscated computers, portable
recorders and administration files.
State security
agents raided the Voice of the People (VOP) radio station in Harare
around 4pm where they reportedly intimidated workers as they searched
for documents and equipment at the station.
The state security
agents demanded to see the transmitters, equipment and news transcripts
that the station uses for its broadcasts. VOP, however, does not
broadcast from Zimbabwe.
The raid comes
two weeks after the state security agents visited the VOP offices
and demanded to see the station's director John Masuku and its editor
Shorai Kariwa.
They were, however,
not allowed in by security details at the radio station.
The offices
of the VOP which broadcasts on short-wave were bombed on 29 August
2002 during which property worth millions of dollars was destroyed.
The raid comes
hard on the heels of statements by the Minister of Information and
Publicity Dr Tichaona Jokonya who branded journalists working for
the private media as "weapons of mass destruction" and
willing tools of Western interests.
In a speech
delivered at the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe's inaugural Consumer
Journalists Awards on 13 December 2005, Jokonya reportedly claimed
that journalists working for the private media were being paid by
Western countries to rubbish President Robert Mugabe's government
and needed to be monitored.
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