CJA E-letter

from the Commonwealth Journalists Association

Headquarters: Frank Stockdale Building, UWI, St Augustine, Trinidad

Issue No 7 February 2005

Page 2 Zimbabwean journalists in UK form association

Page 3 Another reporter murdered in Khulna, Bangaldesh

Page 4 Two killed in ambush near Afghan border

Page 5 Leading editor shot dead in The Gambia

Page 6 The CJA’s new executive directior

Page 7-8 News from round the world

Page 9 There is hope, for Mugabe is afraid A commentary by Gugu Moyo

Zimbabwe’s new independent newspaper

A 24-page weekly tabloid, The Zimbabwean, has been launched for the millions of Zimbabweans living in exile in Britain and Southern Africa, and also for Zimbabweans at home. It is being published in London and Johannesburg and online. Copies are going into Zimbabwe. President Mugabe has not so far banned South-Africa-based papers. In London, journalists distributed copies of the first issue free.

Wilf Mbanga, who launched The Daily News in Zimbabwe in 1999, says his new venture – on which his wife Trish is chief sub-editor - seeks to harness the energies of exiles. Though isolated and marginalised, they are Zimbabwe’s professional and intellectual cream. “They are hungry for news about home and cut off from their families and one another,” he says.

Current legislation makes it hard for independent journalists to report in Zimbabwe. Many bright youngsters have been forced into hardship and unemployment abroad. Some have joined The Zimbabwean. “I have been touched and encouraged by their willingness to get involved,” says Mbanga.

He sees obtaining independent news from Zimbabwe as a challenge. “The forthcoming general election scheduled for March adds urgency. We will ensure that our coverage is accurate, fair and balanced. We will endeavour to give all viewpoints. Everyone – including the government of Zimbabwe – will have the right of reply. We will do everything the government newspapers in Zimbabwe are not allowed to do.

“We believe the paper can play a role in drawing attention to so much that is offensive to human decency and hostile to peace in our beloved Zimbabwe. This may help the country return to the path of wisdom, democracy and the rule of law. We believe that those in authority should be held accountable to those they are supposed to serve. Free media are fundamental to ensuring such accountability.”

Wilf Mbanga and Robert Mugabe used to be friends. They met in 1974 and discovered a common interest in music. After being elected president, Mugabe made Mbanga editor of Zimbabwe’s news agency. But, over the years, Mbanga became alienated by Mugabe’s policies. He told Genevieve Roberts of the London-based Independent: “I was left disillusioned by the man whom I had had absolute faith in.”

The Zimbabwean has the backing of a Dutch aid donor and many subscribers. Mbanga told Roberts: “It’s a real vote of confidence, people paying for year-long subscriptions before even seeing the product.”

Journalists in UK form association

About 40 people met in London in January to form the Association of Zimbabwean Journalists in the UK. Sandra Nyaira, political editor of the now banned Daily News, sees one aim as help for journalists to improve their skills while in exile, help for them to study and continue to write. One day, she said, Zimbabwe will be a different country and they will be returning. In the meanwhile they have knowledge to offer the British media whose articles on Southern Africa are sometimes half-baked.

The association also seeks to help journalists back in Zimbabwe. Sandra Nyaira, Forward Maisokwadzo, Simbarashe Chabarika and Blessing Ruzengwe (CJA UK’s chairman) form an interim committee.

Tawanda Hondora gave a warning that the Zimbabwean government has extended its media legislation to reach exiles and even foreigners. If they write or broadcast anything deemed prejudicial of the government, they can be arrested if they set foot in Zimbabwe and their property can be seized. Those returned to Zimbabwe after the failure of an asylum claim can be arrested, too. A claim for asylum as a refugee is by its very nature prejudicial of the Zimbabwean government.

John Owen, who lectures at City University, offered £500 towards a £1,000 prize for Zimbabwean journalists in the UK. It is named after Mark Chavunduka, late editor of the Zimbabwe Standard, who suffered torture at the hands of the Zimbabwean military. Owen also urged his hearers to make it clear to editors and broadcasters in London that it is in their interests to lend Zimbabwean exiles a hand. They will need the exiles’ help in covering Zimbabwe after the Mugabe regime ends.

Freelances flee, one with youth camp videotape

A freelance journalist, Cornelius Nduna, went into hiding in Zimbabwe in February, pursued by police who suspect him of having a videotape of one of the camps where youngsters learn violence against the regime’s opponents. Three other freelances fled the country after police raided their office in Harare and quizzed them for six hours. One of the three, Brian Latham, who worked for the Bloomberg financial news agency, says he did not want to be kept in jail for months without trial as was former finance minister Chris Kureneri, who was accused, like the three, of economic crimes.

The two others are Angus Shaw who wrote for Associated Press and Jan Raath who wrote for The Times, London. Latham and Shaw were born in Zimbabwe. Raath, a South African, had lived there 30 years. To escape, they drove separately to different borders, leaving their families behind. Reuters and Agence France Presse are now the only international media represented in Zimbabwe. The Daily Telegraph (London) still has Peta Thornycroft.

A Zimbabwean magistrate in January refused to further remand four journalists on the Zimbabwe Independent who were accused of criminally libelling President Mugabe. The Independent alleged a year ago that he had commandeered a civil aircraft to fly him for a holiday in the Far East.

Three days after a new paper, the Weekly Times, was first published in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s media commission threatened it with closure for ‘sectarian bias’. In an interview published on January 2, Archbishop Pius Ncube accused President Mugabe of being unrepentant about killings by the army in Matabeleland in the 1980s.

There is hope for Mugabe is afraid: page 9

Another reporter murdered in Khulna

Sheikh Belaluddin Ahmed, who wrote for the Bangladeshi daily Sangram, was fatally injured on February 5 when Maoists left a bomb on his moped outside the press club at Khulna. Three other journalists were also hurt by the bomb, one seriously. Two suspects were arrested. Two journalists were murdered in Khulna last year.

Since a murder last June, police have guarded the press club but none was there on the evening of February 5. The following day a police officer was fired for ‘negligence’.

The bombing provoked a strong reaction. The Forum to Protect Journalists was formed on February 12 in Dhaka. In a statement, editors of 23 Dhaka dailies said: “We note with regret that after each bombing or murder of a journalist the criminals manage to get away. It is time for concerted action.” Alhaji Liaquat Ali, editor of the Khulna daily, Purbanchal, said the failure to punish those responsible for previous murders had fostered a climate of impunity.

Meanwhile, a leader of the Maoist Purba Bangla Communist Party, which said it did the bombing, wrote to Purbanchal that it had many more journalists in its sights.

In Khulna in January, a bomb thrown by motorcyclists failed to explode. Their target was Dip Azad who writes for the Bangladeshi national daily Jugantor.

Bangladeshi journalists suffer hundreds of assaults and threats annually. They feel under increasing threat for reporting on political violence, graft and organised crime. According to the South Asian Free Media Association, six were killed last year. It added: “No South Asian state is ready to accept the adversarial role of media as watchdogs of civil society.”

Editor, in prison 14 months, charged with sedition

A charge sheet alleging sedition has been issued against the editor and publisher of the Bangladeshi weekly Blitz, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury. He has been in prison 14 months since being arrested as he sought to travel to a writers’ conference in Israel. As evidence of sedition, a security officer cited articles about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, a sensitive subject for a government which includes an Islamic party.

A New York Times article about militant Islam led intelligence agents in January to seek Saleem Samad, earlier imprisoned for two months after working on a documentary for Britain’s Channel 4. Samad now lives in Canada.

Two die in ambush near Afghan border

Two Pakistani journalists were killed on February 7 near the Afghan border. Amir Nawab Khan, correspondent for The Frontier Post, and Allah Noor Wazir, reporter for The Nation and Khyber Television, were travelling in a van near the town of Wana when they were fired on with AK-47s. They died shortly after reaching hospital.

Two other reporters in the van were injured but survived. They are Anwar Shakir, a
reporter for the daily newspaper Islam and Agence France-Presse, and Zardad Khan, working for Al-Jazeera TV. The four had been covering the signing of an agreement between Pakistani authorities and a tribal leader. Baitullah Mehsud had pledged not to support militants or attack government installations.

The authorities routinely bar reporters from entering South Waziristan. Those who report on Al-Queda supporters there are often harassed and threatened.

Weeklies go on strike against militants’ pressure

Four out of six weeklies in the Gilgit area in Pakistan’s far north suspended publication in February, in protest against pressure from religious militants to publish their statements. Gilgit is tense after violence between Shiites and Sunnis. The government in January suspended advertising in eight newspapers which it accused of sensationally reporting the violence. In Lahore, Shiite students, protesting against the death of a scholar hurt in northern riots, stormed the press club and injured nine journalists. Over 100 students were arrested.

In Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, about 60 journalists demanded the release of an Al-Jazeera correspondent detained in Spain.

Over 30 motorcyclists ransacked the Karachi office of the Jang Group on January 30. They were protesting against a liberal TV programme. They also ransacked a camp where the Jang Group was collecting goods for tsunami victims. The Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors has set up a desk to monitor violations of press freedom.

The tsunami hit journalists, too

Two Sri Lankan journalists were missing and 23 injured after the Asian seaquake. Forty-eight had their homes flooded. They lost cameras, fax machines, cassette recorders, motorcycles and mobile phones. Many of their families went to refugee camps or to relatives. Some lost all they owned. The Sri Lanka Environmental Journalists Forum launched an appeal on their behalf, and reported that some foreign journalists gave cameras. SLEJF said: “Provincial journalists are continuing to do their job of informing the people in this devastated area, under the most appalling conditions." The Free Media Movement has attacked the government and parliament for imposing a state of emergency, in the wake of the tsunami.

Leading editor shot dead in The Gambia

A respected independent journalist in The Gambia, Deyda Hydara, was shot dead while driving home from his office on December 16. Aged 58 and married with four children, he was co-owner and managing editor of a tri-weekly, The Point, and was murdered on its 13th anniversary. He also reported for Agence France Presse.

He opposed repressive media laws passed by the Gambian National Assembly two days earlier. One law, endorsed by President Jammeh, imposes prison sentences for libel, sedition and publishing inaccurate news. Another quintuples the cost of a publishing licence. The Gambia Press Union is challenging the laws in the courts.

Reporters Sans Frontieres has called on President Jammeh to set up an independent inquiry into Hydara’s murder . It says he was killed by professionals whose cars had no number plates. This is a common in attacks on the opposition press in The Gambia, for which no one has ever been charged. RSF also recalls a similar murder attempt in 2003 against a lawyer, Ousman Sillah, who has fled to the United States.

On December 30, police held for six hours Sam Obi, a Nigerian journalist, who had spoken on Radio France International about a march protesting against the murder, the latest in a series of attacks on the press. In January last year, Alagi Yorro Jallow, managing editor of The Independent, was threatened by the Green Boys, a group of young government supporters. In April, six masked gunmen, two of them alleged to be members of the National Guard, set fire to The Independent’s printing press. In July Demba Jawo, president of the Gambia Press Union and member of the CJA’s executive, received a threatening anonymous fax. In July, the Green Boys e-mailed a ‘final warning’ to the BBC threatening its Gambia correspondent, Ebrahima Sillah. In August, Sillah’s home was set on fire.

Reporters sans Frontieres has protested at the African Union’s decision to meet in The Gambia despite President Jammeh’s hostility to journalists. Five international organisations have criticised the New Partnership for Africa’s Development for not including free media in its review system for member countries.

A BBC producer, Kate Peyton, was fatally wounded by masked gunmen in February outside a hotel used by journalists in the Somali capital, Mogadushu. She was there to report on a plan for the Somali government to go home from its exile in Nairobi.

Cameroon editor, jailed for libel, is freed

The appeal court in Douala, Cameroon, in February released Jules Koum Koum, editor of the fortnightly Le Jeune Observateur. He had been jailed for six months for libelling an insurance company. The company is bringing another libel action against the paper on February 28. Koum said that, if local journalists and international organisations had not campaigned for him, he would still be in jail.

The CJA’s new executive director

Josanne Leonard is now established as the CJA’s executive director, based at the new Trinidad headquarters. She began working life as a flight attendant with Trinidad and Tobago Air Services and BWIA but soon joined Trinidad Broadcasting Company and the National Broadcasting Service as an announcer and producer. She produced and hosted Trinidad’s first live FM programme. She went on to television and has been writing, producing and taking part in TV programmes for over 20 years.

She worked from 1989 to 1991 at Trinidad’s High Commission in London, promoting Trinidadian culture in the United Kingdom. After this she continued to pursue her interest in Caribbean music, as a record company executive and then a media and marketing consultant. Her consultancies and lobbying have included work for private enterprises, government agencies and non-government organisations. She has taken part in many committees, workshops and conferences particularly concerning music, culture, broadcasting and information technologies.

She advocates a bigger role for civil society in development. She also advocates one Caribbean nation. And her special interests include West Indies cricket.

In February she organised a two-day CJA workshop in Guyana for local and Caribbean journalists on the role of the media in promoting good governance and democracy. It included the role of political journalists in giving all communities the chance to express their concerns. CJA veteran George John also took part.

Barry Lowe stands down as chief trainer

Barry Lowe has given up his post as the CJA’s director of projects, after two years in which he arranged and helped run training courses in a dozen countries from the Caribbean to Malaysia, and on subjects ranging from reporting conflict to reporting local development and environment protection. In London he arranged a workshop for refugee journalists and seminars with the School of Oriental and African Studies. He found new sources of funds for training including the German-based Lighthouse Foundation, the British High Commission in Cyprus and the Commonwealth Secretariat’s technical assistance fund. Seven courses were run in the year 2003/4.

Barry joined the CJA in 1997 at the conference in Hong Kong where he then worked. He now lectures at Thames Valley University in Ealing. He is a committee member of the CJA’s UK branch.

News from round the world

AUSTRALIA

The Media Alliance, representing journalists, is backing an appeal for documents about income tax to be released under the Freedom of Information Act.

GUYANA

The High Court has suspended CNS Channel Six TV while it decides whether a government decision to suspend the station for a month is constitutional. The station criticised government relief measures after major flooding.

INDIA

The Hindu has again been the target for political activists in South India. Ten people barged into the home and office of a Hindu journalist in January and assaulted him for asking a Karnataka MP “uncomfortable questions”. A correspondent for a local daily, Kannada Prabha, was similarly attacked.

English-language papers are sharing in the boom which for many years has boosted the circulation of Indian-language papers. With city populations rising, The Hindustan Times, the biggest selling broadsheet, now sells 900,000 copies a day, a third higher than five years ago. The Times of India is also doing well. Big sales mean high advertising revenue and a low cover price. The Hindustan Times costs only a rupee and a half (twopence) on weekdays. Senior reporters can earn up to £470 a month but the hours are long. However, Indian-language papers, selling in small towns and rural India, still have the greatest potential for growth.

KENYA

The Attorney General decided on January 17 to drop a criminal libel charge against Kamau Ngotho of The Standard. The paper apologised for errors in an article about a small elite continuing to get rich with the help of friends in government. Nine foreign embassies in Nairobi have protested at the government’s use of criminal libel law.

MALAWI

Collins Mtika of the Daily Times was beaten up by supporters of the Alliance for Democracy when he went to a press conference given by AFORD’s leader.

MALAYSIA

The Southeast Asian Press Alliance protested against the grilling at the Science University of Malaysia of a student, Ali Bukhari Amir, who attacked the campus’s partisan politics in the campus newspaper and an opposition party publication. He was also questioned about his website.

MOZAMBIQUE

Two men held Soico TV journalist Jeremias Langa at gunpoint in his car in January and threatened to kill him. They accused him of talking too much.

NIGERIA

Reports about the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra have brought security men into action against newsvendors in towns that were in Biafra in the Nigerian civil war. In January they arrested Enugu newsvendors selling the Eastern Pilot. In February they confiscated copies of The News, The Source, The Week and Hallmark in Onitsha and arrested a distributor. Newsvendors promptly refused to distribute newspapers at all, in protest against arrest, intimidation and extortion by security men. Their placards asked: “When did selling newspapers and magazines become an offence in Nigeria?”

A visit to Israel by a police chief and the publisher of a Port Harcourt tabloid National Network led to the publisher’s arrest in January. Jerry Needam’s paper had reported that the police chief “slumped” while climbing Mount Sinai. The paper also accused Rivers State officials of engaging in “amorous acts” in the Holy Land.

PACIFIC

The Pacific Islands News Association is to celebrate its merger with the Pacific Islands Broadcasting Association at a convention in October.

SIERRA LEONE

Police held magazine editor Olu Richie Awoonor Gordon for three days after he wrote an article criticising the government for not dismissing a minister indicted by a corruption commission. Two other indicted ministers had been dismissed.

SOUTH AFRICA

A businessman is suing a Soweto community newspaper, The Developer, for libel. It made allegations against a business association he chairs and also alleged that he had been before a court on a charge of stealing chickens.

UGANDA

Customs officials arrested and took over $3,000 from a journalist working for Iranian TV, when he entered Uganda to cover a visit by President Khatami of Iran.

UNITED KINGDOM

Scott Taylor, a Canadian journalist once kidnapped by an affiliate of Al Qaeda, spoke to CJA UK about the way in which misinformation about international intervention in Kosovo (Serbia) led on to misinformation justifying intervention in Iraq.

The London-Bangla Press Club has raised £70,000 for its own office. It aims to raise £150,000 by June.

ZAMBIA

Zambia’s Human Rights Commission is inquiring into an incident in January when police beat up four journalists covering a demonstration by opposition parties and civil society organisations seeking speedy adoption of a new constitution.

There is hope, for Mugabe is afraid

By Gugulethu Moyo, formerly legal adviser at the Daily News, Harare

With a general election looming, it comes as no surprise that Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's first new law of 2005 tightens the noose around the neck of the country's media. Amendments to the Orwellian Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) dictate that journalists who work without the approval of a state-appointed media regulator can be imprisoned for two years. Another law awaiting only the president's signature will introduce jail sentences of up to 20 years for anyone convicted of communicating ill-defined "falsehoods" deemed
prejudicial to the state.

These adjustments to the original AIPPA of 2002 affirm the one immutable constant of Zimbabwean journalism - the Mugabe government will stop at nothing to silence criticism. Those who dare to speak out against the government will be punished.

In the three years I worked as legal adviser to the now-banned Daily News, Zimbabwe's only independent daily newspaper, journalists were charged with all manner of catch-all criminal offences that were difficult to disprove but punishable by jail terms under several oppressive laws. They included insulting the president; undermining public confidence in state institutions; engaging in threatening and abusive conduct; and inciting illegal demonstrations.

The state persecuted Daily News journalists and others by dragging out
pre-trial processes for months or even years. None was ever convicted under
the vague legislation.

These mechanisms of intimidation proved inadequate for Mugabe's grander designs - the elimination of particular independent newspapers and radio stations, or the redirection of their editorial policies. In March 2002 Mugabe had the national assembly legislate the AIPPA as his most powerful and effective weapon. AIPPA made the publication of newspapers and the practice of journalism contingent on government whim.

To obtain the legal right to practice as a journalist under AIPPA, an application must be submitted to the Media and Information Commission. Its head is known in Zimbabwean media circles as the hatchet man..

Under AIPPA, three newspapers have been forced to close. These include the Daily News, the country's most popular daily, which was read by about a tenth of Zimbabwe's 11.5 million people. Scores of journalists have lost the right to work lawfully under this legislation and hundreds more have lost their jobs because of the newspaper closures.

AIPPA and the draconian Public Order and Security Act negate the fundamental right to freedom of.expression. They have attracted worldwide condemnation from human rights organisations and media freedom watchdogs. Ironically, they are similar to laws used by Ian Smith during the Rhodesia era.

However, even the harshest laws of the modern Zimbabwean state cannot silence all journalists. In May 2003, after the state failed to secure a conviction against foreign correspondent Andrew Meldrum under AIPPA, he was forcibly deported with only the clothes he was wearing. Meldrum, an American, had reported from Zimbabwe for
22 years, mostly for the London papers The Guardian and The Observer. With Meldrum's removal, there was no foreigner left as a correspondent in Zimbabwe. All others had already been thrown out.

During my first week at the Daily News in 2002, the editor and two journalists were arrested and charged with publishing a falsehood. They were jailed for two days and faced two years' imprisonment, but were never convicted. Several weeks later, three Daily News staffers went to cover an opposition rally to mark International Youth Day. They were beaten up, dragged off to the police station and held for 48 hours while the authorities decided on the charges. Eventually, a charge of engaging in
threatening and abusive conduct was settled on. The case was eventually dismissed. One journalist had suffered a broken arm and another a broken finger at the hands of their captors.

I was myself assaulted by the police. My crime? I was the lawyer for The Daily News.

The Daily News staff were incredibly courageous. They had a job to do and they persevered, despite the constant terror under which they operated. Many continue to operate in defiance of all the restrictive laws.

Despite what is happening, information still gets out of Zimbabwe. There are
weekly newspapers that continue to publish and, as best they can, criticise
the injustice they see around them. However, they reach a far smaller
audience than The Daily News reached. Many former Daily News journalists have
left the country to set up, or write for, foreign-based publications. They expose human rights violations taking place in Zimbabwe, a service more crucial than ever as elections approach.

The fact that people continue to do this is to me a sign of hope. There is hope as long as Mugabe and his followers feel threatened by the written word.

Gugulethu Moyo is now a media relations adviser for the International Bar
Association in London. She wrote this for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting

Our thanks

Once again we thank the Commonwealth Foundation and Commonwealth Media Development Fund for their supportfor the CJA, and the International Freedom of Expression Exchange and associated organisations for information in this newsletter