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Zimbabwe issues warning to remaining journalists
Michael Wines, The New York Times
January 28, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/international/africa/28zimbabwe.html?_r=1

JOHANNESBURG— Zimbabwe's security minister was quoted Friday in a government-controlled newspaper as saying that "the net will soon close" on those remaining journalists whose criticism of the government threatens the nation's security.

The warning from the official, Didymus Mutasa, followed the arrest this month of employees and directors of Voice of the People, a news organization based in the capital, Harare, that had broadcast uncensored reports into Zimbabwe via a shortwave transmitter in Madagascar operated by the Dutch government.

The police in Mutare, in eastern Zimbabwe, also seized a well-known journalist on Jan. 18 and held him for three days on charges of violating the state's media laws. The journalist, Sidney Saize, was released last Saturday, but prosecutors indicated that he would still face charges.

Mr. Mutasa suggested that more arrests were coming, saying that some Zimbabwean journalists have worked for foreign news organizations under pseudonyms but that the government "had since identified them from their closets."

The journalists were "driven by the love for the United States dollars and British pounds, which they are paid by the foreign media houses to peddle lies," he was quoted as saying in a report in The Manica Post, a state-run newspaper in Mutare.

Independent journalists have been under assault in Zimbabwe since 2003, when the government closed down the biggest newspaper, The Daily News, which often criticized President Robert G. Mugabe's government. Only two weekly newspapers of significance remain outside government control, and all broadcast outlets are state-run.

Civil liberties advocates in Zimbabwe said in interviews on Friday that the latest comments might signal a new effort by the government to close down the remaining channels for disagreement with official policy.

Otto Saki, a lawyer with the advocacy group Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, said the government appeared to be carrying out proposals made at a December conference of the governing Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF, to suppress dissent.

That party conference singled out independent journalists, human-rights groups and civic organizations as "weapons of mass destruction" that presented a threat to the state.

"This is the culmination of various efforts and statements by government officials on their intentions to possibly rein in individual organizations that are in the fore of critiquing human rights and general governance," Mr. Saki said in a telephone interview from Harare. "It's a well-calculated policy which is going to be orchestrated with the help of various arms of the government."

In December, the police arrested the director of Voice of the People and several of its journalists on charges of broadcasting without a license. Recent arrests center on the station's six directors.

Arnold Tsunga, director of Mr. Saki's organization and a board member of Voice of the People, was among those arrested in the police sweep.

Andrew Moyse, who coordinates the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe, a press watchdog, also criticized the arrests. They are , he said, "just a further erosion of the democratic space in Zimbabwe.

"Most of the foreign correspondents are gone," he said. "Those who remain, their accreditation is under investigation, and the Media Commission hasn't yet approved their accreditation. So there just aren't very many people left."

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