Zimbabwean police on Monday released three journalists working for a Dutch-based independent radio station following their arrest for breaching the country’s strict broadcasting laws, their lawyer said.
Maria Nyanyiwa, Takunda Chigwanda and Nyasha Bosha, of the Voice of the People (VOP) radio station, were arrested on Thursday when police raided their office.
”They have been discharged this morning,” human rights lawyer Rangu Nyamurundira said, but added ”police are now looking for the director of the radio station here”.
Nyamurundira said a prosecutor at Harare Magistrate’s Court, where the journalists were to appear, said there was no evidence against the three.
”These are just employees and yet the police charged them for ownership of radio-transmission equipment,” he said.
Police charged the reporters under Section 27 of the Broadcasting Services Act, which prohibits possession, establishment or operation of signal-transmitting equipment without a licence.
The arrests came days after immigration authorities seized the passports of three critics under new measures to punish perceived enemies of the state.
Authorities later returned the passports of leading independent newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube — also owner and publisher of the Mail & Guardian in South Africa — and prominent opposition official Paul Themba Nyathi and Raymond Majongwe.
The Dutch-based VOP broadcasts into Zimbabwe on shortwave. Its offices were firebombed in August 2002.
The shortwave radio station is one of only two broadcasters that have managed to circumvent Zimbabwe’s repressive media laws by using transmitters outside the country to carry their programmes on shortwave.
Most of VOP’s programming is in Zimbabwe’s two local languages, Shona and Ndebele, placing it among the few independent media able to reach the large rural population who have no access to urban newspapers.
Zimbabwe has four radio stations and one television station, all controlled by the government. — Sapa-AFP