IRIN Focus on newspaper bombing

For years, independent publications in Zimbabwe have been hampered by a lack of resources and repressive laws. But a new and more deadly obstacle in the form of physical violence threatens to muzzle the small but dynamic private press. An explosion early on Sunday morning reduced five of the six printing presses of the ‘Daily News’ to chunks of cast iron and a mess of burnt newsprint and smouldering ash. Reports suggested the explosive device used were at least four anti-tanks mines and quoted the police as saying they had been engineered by “explosives experts”. No one was injured in the blast in the industrial area of the capital, and the paper was back on the streets on Monday after using the printing press of the weekly ‘Zimbabwe Independent’. Sunday’s blast was the second bomb attack in seven months on the independent daily, and capped a week of mounting political pressure on the newspaper. On Saturday, so-called war veterans and ruling ZANU-PF supporters marched through the city centre threatening to attack the newspaper and staff for its alleged anti-government bias. On Friday, police arrested three ‘Daily News’ journalists for the alleged defamation of President Robert Mugabe. Veterans also set upon vendors and burnt copies of the paper after their leader, Chenjerai Hunzvi, said he would “ban” the paper. On Tuesday they also beat up ‘Daily News’ deputy news editor, Julius Zava. In the increasing political polarisation in Zimbabwe, a day before the bombing, a driver at the state-controlled ‘Herald’ was badly beaten by opposition youths in the sprawling high density suburb of Chitungwiza as he delivered copies of the paper. “If this situation is allowed to prevail, journalists lives will be at risk,” warned Basildon Peta, secretary general of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ). “No one will be free from this wave of violence whether one works for the independent press or the public media.” Although the government has condemned the bombing, Andrew Moyse of the independent Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe, holds the government responsible for the incitement to violence. “It exposes the fear of the government of the private press here, especially the daily press, which has the opportunity to refute the government’s propaganda as it is churned out,” he told IRIN. “It’s founded on the fear of losing power in the presidential elections [in 2002] and is an attempt to stifle and gag any alternative sources of information to the public.” “It is absolutely clear who has done this,” said Trevor Ncube, executive editor of the critical weekly the ‘Zimbabwe Independent’. “I blame Robert Mugabe. He and his people are driving this country into civil war. They have failed to silence us with legislation, with intimidation, and now this.” A splinter group of war veterans, the Zimbabwe Liberators Platform, which has disassociated itself from Hunzvi said on Monday that the bombing was a “desperate attempt to muzzle the independent press and undermine freedom of experession, one of the cardinal tenets of a democratic society.” “The ZANU-PF government which has spawned an environment of lawlessness, anarchy and violence could well be advised that he who sows the wind will surely reap the whirlwind. It is high time they rein in their wayward bandit war veterans and return to civilised norms of political behaviour before it is too late,” the statement said. Running an independent newspaper in Zimbabwe has always been an uphill struggle. Skittish advertisers aside, the papers face a hostile government. The ‘Daily News’ was launched in April 1999 by the 40 percent foreign-owned consortium, Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe. It was the first independent daily since 1995, following the collapse of the ‘Daily Gazette’ after three difficult years punctuated by clashes with the government and repeated vists to the courts by its journalists and editors. According to Moyse, whose MMPZ monitors the media in Zimbabwe, the ‘Daily News’ established itself with its reporting in the run-up to the legislative elections in June last year. The government’s mouthpiece the ‘Herald’, by its own admission, has lost significant circulation to the ‘Daily News’ which has crucially also succeeded in attracting private advertising. The government, however, has issued repeated warnings that it intends to more firmly regulate the independent media. A freedom of information bill is expected to be introduced in the next sitting of parliament in February. According to the government, its aim is to ensure that journalism standards are maintained. But Moyse told IRIN that its likely provisions for the licensing of journalists and publications is aimed at “silencing and muzzling” the independent press, and would make “severe inroads into people’s constitutional rights of freedom of expression”. For more information go to: http://www.dailynews.co.zw/ and for background on media freedom see: http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/1999_hrp_report/zimbabwe.html