(MISA/IFEX) – “The Chronicle” newspaper reported that a group of United Democratic Front (UDF) Young Democrats beat up a news vendor until he lost consciousness because he was selling the newspaper in Blantyre. The incident happened during the first week of October 2000. The vendor was admitted to hospital with head injuries. A close relative […]
(MISA/IFEX) – “The Chronicle” newspaper reported that a group of United Democratic Front (UDF) Young Democrats beat up a news vendor until he lost consciousness because he was selling the newspaper in Blantyre. The incident happened during the first week of October 2000.
The vendor was admitted to hospital with head injuries. A close relative of the vendor told “The Chronicle” that the Young Democrats first demanded that the vendor sell them his entire lot of newspapers. When he refused, they surrounded him and beat him up. The assailants reportedly also threatened to find a “Chronicle” reporter who distributed the newspaper to the vendors and other venues where the newspaper is sold in and around the city.
Investigations by “The Chronicle” apparently revealed that all the newspapers that had been distributed to Times Bookshops had been bought by the same Young Democrats and later set ablaze. By the morning of Tuesday 3 October 2000 – the day after the weekly newspaper was published – all the Times Bookshops were short on copies of the newspaper after it was bought by the Young Democrats.
One vendor, who did not want his name published, was quoted as saying that the Young Democrats had “claimed that the paper has written bad things about the president.”
Background Information
“The Chronicle” is currently facing a threat of lawsuits from President Bakili Muluzi and UDF Vice President Aleke Banda, who is also minister of health and population. This follows the publication of several stories detailing alleged corruption in government and the ruling party (see previous IFEX alert of 10 October 1000).
On 20 September, President Muluzi, through his lawyers, wrote to “The Chronicle” demanding an apology and the retraction of a story that appeared in the newspaper on 18 September, or it would face the prospect of a legal claim for “substantial damages”. The story in question claimed that Muluzi was the mastermind behind a massive corruption scandal that involved siphoning off public monies to fund the UDF’s election campaign in 1999. Neither a retraction nor an apology was published by the paper.
During the week of 2 October 2000, Banda, also through his lawyers, wrote to the newspaper demanding an apology or retraction of a story that appeared on 2 October and which implicated him as having corruptly used public money to fund his election campaign, which he eventually lost.
To date, both Muluzi and Banda have not instituted formal legal proceedings against the paper.
