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Media
fails to adequately cover the acquittal of 63 WOZA women
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media
Update 2006-35
Monday
August 28th 2006 - Sunday September 3rd 2006
THE media’s disturbing failure
to report pertinent court cases was illustrated by their failure
to adequately cover the acquittal of 63 women arrested in February
during the "Bread and Roses" protest organised by Women
of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA). The women were being charged under the
Miscellaneous Offences Act on allegations of "acting
in a manner… likely to lead to a breach of the peace or to create
a nuisance or obstruction".
Apart from the niche market
SW Radio Africa (29/8) and ZWNews (1/9), the rest of the monitored
media ignored this important news and especially the comments of
the magistrate. According to SW Radio Africa, the magistrate ruled
that WOZA’s public distribution of roses and singing during their
demonstration demanding "affordable food and a dignified
life" was not a "nuisance".
He criticised the manner in which the police handled the issue saying,
"Police are supposed to maintain law and order but they
failed to do so and went on a ‘fishing expedition’ to arrest any
women in the vicinity of the protest" without using
"reasonable doubt in the manner of the arrest and provided
no evidence to incriminate the accused".
He added: "It is
better to set free a guilty person than to convict an innocent one".
Whereas it has become the
norm for the government media to censor cases that reflect badly
on government, it is inexplicable for the mainstream private media
to ignore such matters, which expose the police’s increasing abuse
of power to curtail citizens’ rights on the pretext of enforcing
the country’s repressive media and security laws. But despite widespread
calls on government to either amend or repeal these abusive laws,
The Financial Gazette (31/8) revealed that it won’t
budge.
The paper reported that government
had extended "indefinitely" the tenure of
the Tafataona Mahoso-chaired Media and Information Commission (MIC)
on the flimsy grounds that there are still "pending legal
issues that needed to be resolved".
Besides demonstrating government’s
determination to maintain its stranglehold on the media, the development
clearly shows that the composition of MIC is not based on the genuine
desire to regulate the media but on personalities that slavishly
enforce the country’s tyrannical media laws.
Apart from using bodies such
as MIC to silence alternative media, the authorities have also employed
unorthodox means to stifle the free flow of information. For instance,
this week MMPZ had difficulties accessing Studio 7’s Short Wave
frequency due to a droning sound that drowned out some bulletins.
The sound is similar to that previously used to jam the station’s
Medium Wave broadcasts in June.
Two weeks ago Zimbabwejournalists.com
carried an extraordinary report alleging that the jamming machinery
was located in Harare’s Hillside suburb. Reportedly, it was "installed
by the Chinese and secretly commissioned by President Robert Mugabe
in June this year". The jamming station is allegedly
"heavily guarded around the clock" by central
intelligence agents that "severely" beat
up police officers who had gone there to investigate the assault
of a civilian by the operatives near the premises.
Visit the MMPZ
fact
sheet
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