Around 300 people gathered in the Zimbabwe capital Harare on Saturday to mark World Press Freedom Day, as a regional press watchdog claimed the country led the region in repressing the media.
Zimbabwe’s media has been under the spotlight since tough new press laws were introduced last year, which make it a crime to publish ”falsehoods” and require all journalists to be registered.
Sixty-three journalists — almost all from the private press — have been arrested since the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) was passed, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa) says.
Luke Tamborinyoka, the secretary general of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ), told reporters and members of the public gathered in a sunny Harare park that the day was being marked ”under a dark cloud of media repression”. Protest poets performed at the gathering.
In an interview in the private Daily News Misa director Luckson Chipare, said Zimbabwe ”remains the seat of more than half of the (rights) violations recorded in 2002” in the southern African region.
The ZUJ’s Tamborinyoka said AIPPA was an ”obnoxious” piece of legislation that was the ”final nail in the coffin” of Zimbabwean press freedom.
The media law — which is being challenged in a constitutional court –was signed by President Robert Mugabe in March 2002. His government said the international media was biased against Zimbabwe and that new controls on the press were needed.
Andrew Meldrum, spokesperson for the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of Zimbabwe, hailed as ”a victory” the fact that none of the 63 people arrested under AIPPA had been convicted.
Meldrum, who reports for London’s Guardian newspaper, was arrested and charged under the law on May 1 last year for allegedly writing a false story. He was later acquitted.
The American reporter is one of a handful of non-Zimbabwean journalists left operating in the country. At least five foreign correspondents have been forced to leave Zimbabwe since 2001.
Government opponents claim that the state-run press here is used to further the interests of the ruling party.
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ), a local watchdog, said Saturday the government used state-owned newspapers and the national broadcaster as ”messengers of its own propaganda at the expense of the truth”.
The remark came as the official Herald newspaper quoted Information Minister Jonathan Moyo as saying the national radio stations should carry 100% local content in order to spearhead a ”cultural revolution”.
Under current regulations, 75% of the music broadcast on the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) has to be composed locally. The remaining 25% can be made up of international music.
”Americans have 100% local content and the British also have the same and I think we can take the lead and others may follow,” Moyo told the Herald. – Sapa-AFP