Zimbabweans have been cut off from independent news, with local journalists facing beatings or arrest if they are critical of the government, an African fact-finding mission said on Friday.
”For a local journalist to try to get the facts, he’s asking for trouble,” said Rob Jamieson of the South African National Editors’ Forum, one of several groups involved in the six-person mission that returned from Zimbabwe on Friday, two weeks ahead of a tense presidential run-off election.
The danger reporters face under President Robert Mugabe’s regime has caused some to resort to hiding their identities, and one participant in the mission described a freelance journalist who operated a small shop as cover.
The mission was in Zimbabwe from June 8 to 13 and interviewed a range of reporters throughout the country. They said what they found was disturbing.
Journalists told of arrests on trumped-up charges and raids on the offices of civil-society organisations.
”There was a constant fear,” said Gabriel Ayite Baglo of the International Federation of Journalists’ Africa office.
Some they tried to interview cancelled out of fear they would be seen, they said.
Police have also begun confiscating radios that people in rural areas had used to pick up outside stations, they said.
Those they interviewed also told of ruling-party supporters ordering people in the countryside to take down their satellite dishes.
”It effectively means that people in the rural areas are not getting information at all,” said Jamieson.
Zimbabwe has two dailies, both controlled by the government, and no private radio or television stations.
For an alternative to the official line most people have turned to pirate radio stations and regional newspapers — mostly from South Africa — as well as magazines that carry stories about Zimbabwe.
The government announced earlier this month that it now considered foreign newspapers and magazines luxury items and would slap an import duty of 40% of the total cost per kilogramme on them.
Zimbabwe’s presidential run-off election is set for June 27, with Mugabe facing the most serious challenge to his 28-year reign.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who faces Mugabe in the run-off, has said Zimbabwe is now essentially run by a ”military junta” and claims 66 members of his party have been killed since the first-round vote in March. — AFP
