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The owner of Karora Printers, Kalera Mhango, and the editor of Malawi’s independent ‘Dispatch’ newspaper, Martines Namingah, have been charged with “publishing false information likely to cause public fear and alarm”, an offence they both denied having committed, local media reported on Tuesday.
According to a report in a local newspaper, Namingah and Mhango were released on police bail after a short court appearance on Saturday, 26 May. No dates have been set for further court appearances. The charges come in the wake of a series of articles about President Bakili Muluzi.
The first story alleged that President Bakili Muluzi was scared, following reports that the opposition was planning to impeach him in the June parliamentary sitting. The other story, quoting the former ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) minister Brown Mpinganjira, intimated that the president was the most corrupt person in the country while the third story laid out charges that the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) was spying on UDF Members of Parliament who allegedly sympathise with an opposition pressure group.
In a related development, police have reportedly released four vendors on bail. They were arrested on the 25 May for selling the ‘Dispatch’ newspaper. Media activists viewed this recent clamp-down on the media in Malawi as an effort to silence dissenting voices in a prelude to an unconstitutional third term bid by the incumbent president Muluzi.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions