19 Mar 13 | Newswire
This is a guest post by Nani Jansen, Senior Legal Counsel, Media Legal Defence Initiative
Beatrice Mtetwa is one of Zimbabwe’s most high profile lawyers. Renowned for her lack of fear she has long been the go-to lawyer for human rights activists, politicians and journalists threatened by the hard hand of Robert Mugabe’s regime.
She has won international awards aplenty — the Index on Censorship Law Award 2006, CPJ’s Press Freedom Award in 2005; Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize of the European Bar Human Rights Institute in 2009, and the International Human Rights Award of the American Bar Association in 2010 — but at home, her defence of Mugabe’s opponents has won her few friends among the regime. In 2003, she was arrested on spurious allegations of drunk driving and beaten by police; and in 2007, Ms Mtetwa and three of her colleagues were beaten by police at a protest against police harassment of lawyers in Harare.
Now she has been arrested again — this time for allegedly “obstructing the course of justice”.
Last Sunday, she was arrested, together with three senior MDC officials, at the house of one of Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s advisers — Thabani Mpofu. She had been called to Mpofu’s house in the morning, when he was arrested and his house was being searched. Upon arrival, Ms Mtetwa asked the police officers conducting the search to produce a search warrant, which they refused. When she protested against continuation of the search, the officers tried to take away her cell phone and purse. Upon resisting this attempt, she was placed under arrest for “obstructing the course of justice.”
After the arrest, Mtetwa was taken to Rhodesville police station in Harare. An urgent petition for her release was filed by the human rights group Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, which was granted just before midnight. However, police have refused to comply with the court order and Ms Mtetwa is still being held in detention. She is reportedly being moved from one police station to the other prevent her lawyers from officially serving the court order and has been denied access to counsel.
The Media Legal Defence Initiative, on whose international advisory board Ms Mtetwa serves, has now filed a formal petition with the African Union and United Nations’ special mandates for the protection of human rights defenders, the independence of lawyers and freedom of expression for their urgent intervention. While Zimbabwean police refuse to comply with court orders, international pressure — including from the African Union — is hoped to have a result.
19 Mar 13 | Uncategorized
This is a guest post by Nani Jansen, Senior Legal Counsel, Media Legal Defence Initiative
Beatrice Mtetwa is one of Zimbabwe’s most high profile lawyers. Renowned for her lack of fear she has long been the go-to lawyer for human rights activists, politicians and journalists threatened by the hard hand of Robert Mugabe’s regime.
She has won international awards aplenty — the Index on Censorship Law Award 2006, CPJ’s Press Freedom Award in 2005; Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize of the European Bar Human Rights Institute in 2009, and the International Human Rights Award of the American Bar Association in 2010 — but at home, her defence of Mugabe’s opponents has won her few friends among the regime. In 2003, she was arrested on spurious allegations of drunk driving and beaten by police; and in 2007, Ms Mtetwa and three of her colleagues were beaten by police at a protest against police harassment of lawyers in Harare.
Now she has been arrested again — this time for allegedly “obstructing the course of justice”.
Last Sunday, she was arrested, together with three senior MDC officials, at the house of one of Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s advisers — Thabani Mpofu. She had been called to Mpofu’s house in the morning, when he was arrested and his house was being searched. Upon arrival, Ms Mtetwa asked the police officers conducting the search to produce a search warrant, which they refused. When she protested against continuation of the search, the officers tried to take away her cell phone and purse. Upon resisting this attempt, she was placed under arrest for “obstructing the course of justice.”
After the arrest, Mtetwa was taken to Rhodesville police station in Harare. An urgent petition for her release was filed by the human rights group Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, which was granted just before midnight. However, police have refused to comply with the court order and Ms Mtetwa is still being held in detention. She is reportedly being moved from one police station to the other prevent her lawyers from officially serving the court order and has been denied access to counsel.
The Media Legal Defence Initiative, on whose international advisory board Ms Mtetwa serves, has now filed a formal petition with the African Union and United Nations’ special mandates for the protection of human rights defenders, the independence of lawyers and freedom of expression for their urgent intervention. While Zimbabwean police refuse to comply with court orders, international pressure — including from the African Union — is hoped to have a result.
22 Mar 12 | Africa, Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
A Zimbabwe court on Monday fined six activists 500 USD (315 GBP) each and ordered them to carry out 420 hours of community service for conspiring to commit public violence during a meeting at which they watched video footage of Egyptian mass uprisings. Harare magistrate Kudakwashe Jarabini ordered former opposition politician Munyaradzi Gwisai and five others to do community service or face a year in jail. He said that, although watching a video was not a crime, the “manner and motive” of the meeting showed bad intent, ruling that showing the footage that included “nasty scenarios” was intended to arouse hostility towards Zimbabwe’s government.
17 Feb 12 | Sub-Saharan Africa
In places like Zimbabwe the need for “outsider” critique is essential: solipsistic regimes create complex narratives about betrayal and patriotism; no more so than in Zimbabwe. Whether material originates from “inside” or “outside” the regime can be important in establishing its veracity.
A very small minority of Zimbabweans (about 3 per cent) live in isolated elite comfort, with their cable televisions buffering the reality of Zimbabwe’s weak local media situation, watching whatever they feel like, from Hollywood films to BBC to Al Jazeera and DSTV, whilst the rest of the citizens either see it with their own eyes, or rely on the local media.
And herein lies the problem: no critical, debating, investigative or contextual news gets reported.
The recent news that the government plans to invoke a peculiar mangle of laws to prevent “foreign” papers (including the Sunday Times and various South African papers) distributing unless they have local offices, means that Zimbabweans access to information is even more limited than it was previously.
For some wealthier Zimbabweans, this move is not necessarily being greeted with alarm. Linda, a Zimbabwean journalist in who works across the region, says “Yes, I get foreign media, I like it. But it’s a pose, getting your information from abroad. Local media is fine. We get constant Russian television, that’s sufficient.” Others, however are astonished, and see this bill as an extension of the theme that Zimbabwe’s media really only exists to bolster and defend the ailing, and increasingly vulnerable president Mugabe.
Zimbabwe is a peculiar beast: at one level it is now several steps away from the hyper-inflation days of 2008. But, it is still floundering in economic and social chaos. Since the introduction of the Botswana pula, the South African rand and the US dollar, trade is improving, but this is not reflected in the health of the country’s media.
In the absence of spare cash to buy papers, the shoddy state of local newspapers, and the restrictions imposed on media operations, people get inventive. Kubutana stays afloat using a variety of techniques which employ both technology and people’s ability to talk to each other face to face. They’ve changed the way milions of people vote in Zimbabwe. They provide a symbolic and actual hub for information. Still it’s the life on the street that is important, the constant mingling, chatting and gossiping that keeps the public sphere alive, with a few exceptions.
In this context, the Zimbabwean market traders and street vendors are essential. They know stuff. They see it with their own eyes and they constantly have a stream of people to interact with: at a micro level they are intellectual hubs. When the licencing system of street fruit vendors forced Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi to burn himself to death, Zimbabwe’s street traders clocked it.
In January 2012 in Harare, several police officers were left injured during clashes involving removing street vendors from central areas. The Zimbabwean reported that two vendors had to be hospitalised after being tortured by police, and two reporters from the local newspaper the Daily News were detained by police. But they didn’t give reasons, context or views of those involved. Although the protests are a long way from sparking a revolution in Zimbabwe, the determination of vendors to fight for their livelihoods is a sign that people will speak out.
Street vendors, like many in Africa, are living a hand to mouth existence, often moonlighting several jobs, and the licencing system is a well-known ploy of governments here in the region to “clean up” their unsightly presence- particularly when there’s foreign dignitaries visiting, or an African Union delegation. Even streets get renamed. It’s all about looking good, yet paradoxically street vendors are essential for the large majority’s needs. They only exist because of the numerous trade agreements the Zimbabwean government has signed with the Chinese to ensure there’s a steady flow of buckets, washing up bowls, plates and radios, which of course local people need, want, and it’s all they can afford. But still Zimbabweans are ambivalent and disparaging “We want real money, not zhing-zhong,” taxi driver Jourbet Buthelezi, referring to the pejorative term Zimbabweans use for sub-standard Chinese goods.
