|
Back to Index
The MDC slams arrests of Daily News reporters
Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC)
December
03, 2011
The MDC strongly condemns the continued persecution and arrests
of journalists from the private media.
This follows
Friday's arrest
of two Daily News journalists, Editor Stanley Gama and reporter,
Xolisani Ncube. The arrests of the two journalists comes barely
a year after the newspaper re-opened after it was closed seven years
ago under the draconian Access
to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (Aippa).
These arrests come barely
two weeks after the arrest of two other journalists from The Standard
newspaper and we condemn them in the strongest terms.
What is more worrying
is that the two latest arrests are as a result of instructions from
corrupt Zanu PF officials.
The arrests on Friday
on "criminal defamation" charges were from instructions
from Ignatious Morgen Chiminya Chombo, the Minister of Local Government,
Rural and Urban Development after The Daily News published a story
in which Chombo was said to have bragged about his wealth to a delegation
from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
As a party, the MDC's
position is that it is Chombo, a former university lecturer, who
should be arrested because of his corrupt activities which have
seen him illegally acquiring unexplainable wealth since he became
the Minister of Local Government.
Chombo has illegally
acquired vast tracts of land in almost each local council. Chombo,
under a cloud of corrupt land deals literally covering the whole
of Zimbabwe, has also been on the war path to confuse investigations
into his personal affairs through suspensions and dismissals of
popularly elected local MDC councillors.
The MDC is worried by
the continued arrests of journalists from the independent media
with investigative journalism now being turned into a criminalised
profession.
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
