(MISA/IFEX) – The editor of the independent weekly “Savana”, Salomao Moyana, along with one of the paper’s senior reporters, Paulo Machava, received an anonymous phone call threatening them with death, reports the Mozambican news agency AIM. Moyana told AIM that Machava took the call on 14 December 2000. There was a male voice on the […]
(MISA/IFEX) – The editor of the independent weekly “Savana”, Salomao Moyana, along with one of the paper’s senior reporters, Paulo Machava, received an anonymous phone call threatening them with death, reports the Mozambican news agency AIM.
Moyana told AIM that Machava took the call on 14 December 2000. There was a male voice on the other end of the line, saying that Machava and Moyana were on a list of people to be eliminated, because “you talk too much” and “you stick your noses into things.” The death list apparently also included some businessmen and a politician.
According to Moyana, in the light of the 22 November assassination of “Metical” editor Carlos Cardoso (see IFEX alerts of 28, 24 and 23 November 2000), such threats ought to be taken seriously. As a result, Moyana has requested police protection. He said he thought there was some force at work interested in destabilising the rule of law that Mozambique was trying to build.
“There are forces that are not interested in the atmosphere of democratic freedoms, freedoms of expression and of the press that we are experiencing,” he told AIM. Instead, they want to “speed up the deterioration of the political situation by attacking the press.”
