A ZIMBABWEAN court denied a request on Tuesday by two journalists to drop charges filed against them under harsh new media laws on grounds that the laws violate constitutional rights to free expression.
But lawyers said they would take their case to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the country.
Rejecting their request, Harare Magistrate Lilian Kudya ordered Andrew Meldrum (50) a US citizen who is the Zimbabwe correspondent of the British newspaper The Guardian, and Lloyd Mudiwa, a reporter with Zimbabwe’s only independent daily newspaper, to reappear for the beginning of their trial May 22.
Kudya ruled there was a case to be pursued under the new media laws.
Kudya, however, dropped charges against Collin Chiwanza, another reporter from The Daily News, who had also been charged with ”abuse of journalistic privilege by publishing falsehoods,” a crime punishable by up to two years in jail under media laws in effect since March.
Critics say the media laws are aimed at stifling free speech and dissent against the government.
Chiwanza testified on Tuesday he was assigned to assist Mudiwa but had not written any part of a report in the Daily News about the killing last month – allegedly by ruling party supporters – of a woman near the town of Karoi, 200 kilometres northwest of Harare.
Police said the killing never happened, and the Daily News retracted the story.
The Guardian was among international media organisations which referred to the report. The Daily News later said it may have been deliberately misled in a ”sting” to discredit it. Though its reporters and Meldrum were arrested and detained, the original informant had not been questioned by police.
On Monday, police arrested and charged a Daily News columnist, bringing to eight the number of journalists arrested under the new laws.
Pius Wakatama (62) who writes a weekly political column, was also accused of publishing false information in two of his Saturday columns.
In one he referred to the alleged Karoi killing and in another he was critical of the tacit government support of land seizures by ruling party militants that had displaced black farm workers and forced white land owners to flee, including the family of a veteran white supporter of the country’s liberation movement from white
minority rule.
Wakatama is expected to be summoned to court soon.
The media laws were passed shortly before the re-election of longtime President Robert Mugabe. Human rights groups and opposition activists said the laws are intended to muzzle the media as part of wider effort to suppress dissent in Zimbabwe.
Four other journalists, including a correspondent of the British Daily Telegraph, have been arrested since the media laws went into effect. They have been released but may be summoned to court in the future.
The judiciary has been under growing pressure by the government to issue rulings in its favour and government officials and since political unrest began in Zimbabwe two years ago, there have been several resignations by independent-minded members of the judiciary. – Sapa-AP