Journalist Stanley Kwenda has fled to South Africa after alleging that he received a death threat by telephone from a senior police officer, linked to a story he wrote in The Zimbabwean. The newspaper says that “‘impeccable sources” have supplied them with the name of a senior member of the police’s law and order section, who has been associated over the years with the arrest and torture of opposition politicians, journalists and human rights activists, but they cannot publish it for legal reasons.
In the current issue of Index on Censorship magazine Kwende writes that coalition government in Zimbabwe has so far failed to deliver on its promise of greater media freedom. Read it here.
Meanwhile, the Media Institute of Southern Africa has “cautiously welcomed”the appointment of commissioners to the Zimbabwe Media Commission, while recognising that the commission could still be used to enforce the repressive provisions of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
