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Government
media suffocates human rights violations
Media
Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2006-7
Monday February 13th – Sunday February 19th
2006
THE urgent need
for more alternative daily sources of information was again glaringly
illustrated by the government media’s initial suffocation of various
widespread human rights violations by government agencies during
the week, followed by their entirely inadequate and tardy coverage
of these events.
For example,
these media censored the detention
of about 400 women and several infants, who participated in
peaceful demonstrations in Harare and Bulawayo organised by Women
of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) against economic hardships and rights abuses.
Neither did they adequately cover the arrest of hundreds of vendors
accused of engaging in "illegal activities" in
Harare under "Operation Valentine", nor the detention
of several students protesting huge hikes in fees at institutions
of higher learning.
Instead, they
merely reported the cases as normal, isolated events, as illustrated
by reports in The Herald (14/2) and the Chronicle
(16/2).
Only the private
media gave the arrests and detentions adequate prominence and interpreted
them as rights violations. For example, throughout the week Studio
7 and SW Radio Africa carried daily updates on the arrests of the
WOZA women, which highlighted their harassment by the police and
noted that the activists’ extended detention was illegal because
the police failed to take them to court within the prescribed 48
hours.
The stations
and the Zimbabwe Independent (17/2) also condemned the arrest
of the women’s lawyer, Tafadzwa Mugabe, who was detained while representing
his clients.
In their stories
on the crackdown on students, Studio 7 (15/2) and SW Radio Africa
(16/2) reported that the police had detained more than 20 National
University of Science and Technology students demonstrating against
recent increases in university fees.
Although the
Chronicle reported the story (17/2), it cobbled up a conspiracy
theory, blaming the privately owned Studio 7 for the demonstration.
It quoted unnamed
"sources" claiming that "employees"
of the "pirate radio station" bought "beer
and gave money to some of the students" to "cause
unrest" thereby giving the "anti-Government
radio station" ammunition to "discredit
the State in its bulletins".
No evidence
was provided to substantiate this absurd claim.
Studio 7 (16/2)
also revealed that barely three weeks after Security Minister Didymus
Mutasa threatened independent journalists, freelance reporter Gift
Phiri was severely assaulted by five suspected security agents in
Harare, accusing him of working for foreign media, including the
privately owned Voice of the People.
Again, the government
media ignored the matter.
While the country’s
dominant government media were busy stifling such news, Zimbabwe’s
ambassador to South Africa, Simon Khaya Moyo, attacked the SABC
for "constantly portraying Harare negatively in its news
bulletins", (The Herald and Chronicle,
15/2).
Visit the MMPZ
fact sheet
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