A former opposition politician who joined Zimbabwe’s government as deputy information minister is calling for changes in the laws under which two journalists were arrested this week.
”It is unfortunate that we still have laws in our country that infringe on media freedom and freedom of expression,” Jameson Timba told the Associated Press on Tuesday, a day after the editor and the news editor of the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper were arrested and charged with publishing falsehoods in an article about the abduction of opposition and human rights activists.
Timba said media laws were being reviewed ”so that we can create an environment that facilitates the unimpeded flow and consumption of information.”
Timba’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) joined Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF in government in February, suspending their decade-old rivalry to fight their country’s economic and political crises.
Amid signs Zanu-PF hard-liners are still using their old tactics of violence and arrest to silence dissent, international donors have been slow to offer the development aid Mugabe thought he was securing when he agreed to govern with the MDC.
Monday’s arrest of Vincent Kahiya and Constantine Chimakure of the Zimbabwe Independent comes at a time when the editor of the Sunday News, Brezhnev Malaba and journalist Nduduzo Tshuma are facing criminal defamation charges for publishing a story implicating the police in a corruption scandal.
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights director Irene Petras says the article that resulted in the arrest of Kahiya and Chimakure was based on court papers, and that their arrest was ”unjustifiable and unsustainable.” — Sapa-AP