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Government persists with crackdown on perceived political opponents
Extracted from Media Update 35/2008
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
November 02, 2008

MMPZ is concerned that despite commitments to political tolerance advocated in the power-sharing agreement signed between ZANU PF and the two MDC formations in September, the ZANU PF authorities continue to persecute perceived critics. Ironically, the latest attack on Zimbabweans' basic freedoms occurred at the venue of a SADC Troika meeting in Harare aimed at salvaging the agreement where police violently broke up peaceful protests by youths and women urging a speedy resolution to the impasse, citing deteriorating socio-economic and political conditions in the country.

A disturbing element of this assault was the government media's complicity by either censoring or manipulating their accounts of the incident in order to portray state repression against members of the Women's Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCZ) as justified because they were affiliated to other well-known government critics.

The Herald (28/10), for example, narrowly reported the arrest of 43 women during the protest and misleadingly linked them to "an opposition pressure group" Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), whose spirited but entirely peaceful demonstrations for the restoration of basic human rights have consistently led to conflict with the authorities.
Instead of explaining the purpose of the protests, the paper passively reported the police accusing the women of "holding an illegal demonstration" in an "apparent attempt to provoke arrest".

There was no effort to correct the misleading portrayal of the demonstrators as WOZA activists, even after WCZ wrote to the paper (30/10) pointing out the distortion. More credible reports only appeared in the private media.

This latest police crackdown on a peaceful public protest belies the recent amendments to the repressive Public and Order and Security Act, which in theory, were aimed at allowing greater democratic expression ahead of the country's harmonized March 29 elections as part of a wider SADC initiative to ensure free and fair elections.

The amendments were supposed to enable Zimbabweans of all political persuasion to exercise their democratic rights to hold public meetings and peaceful protests with the police's role being to ensure the orderly exercise of these rights. But their continued politically partisan actions clearly exposes the impunity of the police and renders these reforms meaningless.

In a related matter, the private media reported that police had arrested a suspected British journalist at Harare International Airport on allegations of "practicing (journalism) without accreditation", despite amendments to the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), making such a requirement basically obsolete. The Standard (2/11) noted the paradox of the arrest, coming shortly after the much publicized signing of the ZANU PF/MDC deal where a pledge was made to "uphold and develop Press freedom". The official media did not report the arrest.

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