Zim jams private radio station
2005-03-20 19:52
Special Report
A classical music presenter for the BBC has been arrested and is in custody in Zimbabwe.
Cape Town - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government is jamming broadcasts to Zimbabwe from a London-based pro-democracy radio station, an independent media monitoring agency said on Sunday.
The Zimbabwe Media Monitoring Project (MMPZ) said the government was using sophisticated Chinese equipment to block out broadcasts from Short Wave Radio Africa, run by a group of exiled Zimbabwean press freedom activists.
The watchdog quoted a report by the Washington-based federal International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which said the jamming appeared to emanate from Thornhill, a military airbase and state communications centre in the central city of Gweru.
Three jammers were being used to scramble the SWRA's three shortwave frequencies, according to the IBB.
The British Broadcasting Corporations Monitoring Services also confirmed the jamming operation. "The interfering signals were present only for the period of the SWRA programming," said a spokesperson.
The station has resumed broadcasting on different frequencies.
SWRA began operating in 2001, after the supreme court abolished a state monopoly on radio services. However, it was shut down after only a few days and subsequently shifted to London. The government later passed laws to ban private radio and television stations.
For three hours daily, the station broadcasts news and editorials mostly on the country's political situation in a bid to provide an alternative to the government-controlled public press and broadcasting networks.
The three public radio stations and one television station publish blatant ruling party propaganda and racist hate speech, according to media freedom activists.
The government's jamming operations against SWRA were "a deliberate assault on the freedom of expression" and denying the public the right to information especially in the run-up to scheduled parliamentary elections on March 31, according to the MMPZ.
In total 92% of the state election coverage is positive reporting on the ruling party's campaign, while the opposition Movement for Democratic Change received only 6% of all coverage, th MMPZ said in a report last week.
The latest disruption followed earlier moves against independent media. The campaign has seen a Dutch-based radio station in Harare destroyed by a bomb and four independent newspapers banned, including the independent Daily News which also suffered bomb attacks.
Scores of journalists, editors and media proprietors have also been arrested under press-gag laws introduced in 2002, which prescribe a sentence of up to two years for "working illegally as a journalist."
Visiting foreign correspondents have been almost totally banned, and nearly all of the country's locally-based journalists reporting for foreign media have been deported or driven out of the country.
The Zimbabwean government is among the world's 10 worst offenders against press freedom, according to the New York-based International Committee to Protect Journalists.
- SAPA