(MISA/IFEX) – Zimbabwe’s Vice President Simon Muzenda said that the government would not hesitate to arrest journalists who wrote inaccurate stories about the country “to please Western detractors,” the 24 August 2001 edition of “The Herald” reported. Muzenda was speaking at a Zimbabwe Republic Police parade at the police training school in Harare, the capital, […]
(MISA/IFEX) – Zimbabwe’s Vice President Simon Muzenda said that the government would not hesitate to arrest journalists who wrote inaccurate stories about the country “to please Western detractors,” the 24 August 2001 edition of “The Herald” reported.
Muzenda was speaking at a Zimbabwe Republic Police parade at the police training school in Harare, the capital, on 23 August. “Those who want to tarnish our country’s image through inaccurate reporting in Western-backed media should have the courage to answer charges about their malicious political campaigns in the courts of law,” Muzenda said. “This tendency of projecting our security institutions as barbaric and morally decadent, particularly the police and the army in which strides were made to make them professional since independence, can never be tolerated.”
The vice president went on to say that arrested journalists “should not complain because it was proper for them to display the courage that enables them to write fiction.” The vice president also said the country’s detractors would never win, as the government was aware of the move to tarnish its image abroad.
BACKGROUND:
Since 14 August, police have picked up eight journalists for questioning and preferment of charges for various alleged crimes ranging from criminal defamation of the police force to defamation of the president (see IFEX alerts of 23, 22, 17, 16 and 15 August 2001).
