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Judge
drops case against staff of Voice of the people
Reporters
sans frontières / Reporters Without Borders
September 25, 2006
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15924
Reporters Without
Borders welcomed the decision of a judge in Zimbabwe to drop charges
against the management of the privately-owned radio Voice
of the people (VOP).
The 25 September 2006 decision highlights how the government has
been hounding one of the two last independent radios in the country,
the worldwide press freedom organisation said.
The judge hearing the case, William Bhila, president of the Harare
court, decided to reject the prosecution's third request for an
adjournment. "This has become a circus", he said before announcing
charges would be dropped against the radio's ten defendants.
VOP board members Arnold Tsunga, Millie Phiri,
Isabella Matambanadzo, David Masunda, Nhlanhla Ngwenya,
Lawrence Chibwe and John Masuku, had been arrested in
January 2006 on the pretext that they "possessed and used transmission
equipment without permission". Radio staffers Maria Nyanyiwa,
Takunda Chigwanda and Nyasha Bosha had been held for
four days in December 2005 after police searched the radio studios
in the centre of the capital. They were all released on bail.
The radio puts out short wave programmes in Shona and Ndebele, the
country's two main languages, between 7pm and 8pm, using the transmitter
of the Dutch public radio, Radio Netherlands, in Madagascar.
The radio had to abandon broadcasts from Zimbabwe after its offices
in Milton Park, Harare were destroyed in a bomb attack on 29 August
2002, for which no-one has ever been brought to justice.
The radio resumed broadcasting soon afterwards from abroad. Between
18 September and 26 October 2005, Zimbabwean intelligence, with
the help of Chinese technicians, jammed VOP programmes. The
jamming only stopped when the radio changed its broadcast frequency.
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