Zim tells media watchdogs to expect violence

Representatives of several powerful international media associations were told by top government officials on Thursday that Zimbabwe’s independent media must expect violence for “provoking” supporters of President Robert Mugabe’s regime, SAPA-DPA reported. The five-member delegation of the Co-ordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organisations were quoted as saying that senior officials in Mugabe’s information ministry warned it was “understandable” that journalists who were seen as supporting an anti-ruling party agenda would be threatened with violence. The Zimbabwean officials told the group in a meeting this week that “those who provoke should accept they would get a violent response”, according to David Dadge of the Vienna-based International Press Institute. Joe Mdhlela of the Media Workers’ Association of South Africa was quoted as saying that information minister Jonathan Moyo had accused the country’s main independent newspapers of “pushing a political agenda for the opposition”.

Dadge said that Moyo, also Mugabe’s propaganda czar, had “expressed pride” in the lawless movement of so-called guerilla war veterans, which has been held responsible for the campaign of intimidation and violence around the country since February last year. According to Dadge, Moyo said the militias were “very much an important core” of Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party.

Violence against journalists had increased in recent months, which the government appeared to condone, the delegation said in a preliminary report on its four-day visit to the country. The report cited the bombings of the offices and printing presses of the independent ‘Daily News’, threats by cabinet ministers to single out individual journalists for attack and the expulsion of foreign journalists.
The delegation was also quoted as saying that Moyo had accused the panel of “bias” and had become “very angry” when he was asked why there had been no progress in police investigations into the ‘Daily News’ bombing. The delegation represents the American-based Committee to Protect Journalists, the Commonwealth Press Union, the Inter-American Press Association, the International Association of Broadcasting, the International Federation of the Periodical Press and the World Association of Newspapers.