Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009africa: zimbabwecharges of “publishing falsehoods,” journalists told CPJ. The weekly had publisheda front-page story naming police officers and security agents involved inthe December 2008 arrests of Manyere and several MDC members. A Hararemagistrate released Kahiya and Chimakure on bail the next day. The journalists’defense lawyer, Innocent Chagonda, told CPJ the article was “correct in every respect”and was based on public court records. The case was pending in late year.Manyere told CPJ that he was kept for months in solitary confinement atChikarubi Prison, a Harare facility known for its ill treatment of inmates. Hewas among a large group of people arrested in late 2008, most of them activists,including former Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and Voice of Peace presenterJestina Mukoko. Manyere told CPJ he had been beaten, repeatedly blindfolded,and kept in iron shackles. He recounted a harrowing experience in whichhe saw “a lot of moving skeletons in the prison because there was no food, noblankets, and no clothes.” Manyere, recipient of the 2009 Percy Qoboza ForeignJournalist Award given by the U.S.-based National Association of Black Journalists,said he believed he had been arrested for his coverage of human rights abusesin rural areas. Freed on bail in April, Manyere faced charges of banditry, insurgency,and terrorism in late year.The case proved to have numerous tentacles. Manyere’s defense lawyer, AlecMuchadema, was kept overnight at Harare’s Braeside Police Station in May afterthe Attorney General’s office accused him of colluding with a court clerk to winManyere’s release on bail, according to media defense lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa. Anexasperated Muchadema told the London-based exile radio station SW Radiothat “the pattern of lawless intimidation by authorities was systematic and widespreaddespite the fact that a new inclusive government ruled the country.” In July,Manyere filed a lawsuit against the government, alleging illegal detention.Journalists continued to win occasional victories in Zimbabwean courts,which have exercised a level of independence over several years. In June, four independentjournalists challenged Information Minister Shamu’s directive thatall reporters covering the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africasummit in Victoria Falls be accredited though the state Media and InformationCommission.The journalists—Stanley Gama, Valentine Maponga, Stanley Kwenda, andJealous Mawarire—pointed out that the commission had been abolished in January2008 as part of reforms to the repressive Access to Information and Protectionof Privacy Act (AIPPA). High Court Justice Bharat Patel ordered the governmentto withdraw the accreditation requirement. Despite the ruling, securityguards prohibited the four journalists from entering the summit without accreditation,according to local news reports.The AIPPA reforms also called for creation of a new media regulator, which,with private media representation, could act more independently. The Media andInformation Commission was a notoriously repressive agency that had bannedseveral prominent newspapers, including the Daily News, the Daily News on Sunday,the Tribune, and the Weekly Times. But the new regulatory agency had notbeen established by late year; neither the dormant private papers nor new privatepublications could obtain licenses to operate.In July, a special government committee reviewed the case of the bannedDaily News, once Zimbabwe’s leading private daily but shuttered in 2003, accordingto local news reports. The paper’s exiled editor-in-chief was still waiting foran outcome in late year. “We have not gotten the license yet, only the eligibilityfor a license,” said the editor, Geoff Nyarota, a former CPJ International PressFreedom Awardee. In contrast, a new state-run tabloid, H-Metro, was allowed tolaunch in September without a license, according to news reports.The government also failed to implement reforms to the Broadcasting ServiceAct, which were enacted in January 2008 to allow private outlets to obtain broadcastlicenses. The year ended, as it began, with a virtual state monopoly on broadcastmedia. The power-sharing agreement had also pledged to ensure the processing ofprivate broadcast licenses, even encouraging exile-run stations to apply.Conditions did improve for foreign publications after an exorbitant customduty was lifted in August. Mugabe’s government had decreed in 2008 that foreignpublications were “luxury goods” subject to a 40 percent import tax. The feesharmed papers such as The Zimbabwean and its sister publication, The Zimbabweanon Sunday, which were edited by exiled Zimbabwean journalist Wilf Mbangaand printed in South Africa. Mbanga said the paper’s circulation dropped from200,000 to 60,000 during the time the duty was imposed.The same month, the government allowed both the BBC and CNN to resumeoperations in Zimbabwe. The two stations had been banned at the heightof Mugabe’s farm invasions in 2001, when the government seized white-ownedagricultural property and transferred ownership to ruling party officials. In announcingthe decision, Information Minister Shamu said the government andthe BBC had “acknowledged the need to put behind us the mutually ruinous relationshipof the past,” according to local news reports.One independent station, Zimbabwe Community Radio, launched from anundisclosed location in March, local journalists told CPJ. The station broadcastin the country’s three main languages: Ndebele, Shona, and English.5 05 1