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Police defy judge over Daily News
Offices
of The Daily News19/12/03
THE Zimbabwe
government today defied a court order to allow the country’s only
independent daily newspaper to resume publishing and sent riot police
shut down its printing plant.
And the judge who made the order asked for police protection after he received a death threat.
The editor of the Daily News, Nqobile Nyathi said that after a court ruling earlier today permitting the paper to reopen, the staff were preparing an eight page edition.
But armed riot police sealed off entrances to the printing works in western Harare and ordered all staff to go home, Nyathi said.
“We are trying to sort it out but it doesn’t look as if there’s much hope,” she said.
Scores of staff were cleared from the plant. There were no arrests.
Police and government spokesmen were not immediately available for comment.
Earlier a judge ordered Zimbabwe authorities to allow the newspaper, banned in September, to resume publishing.
Judge Selo Nare, presiding over an appeal against the closure of The Daily News, upheld a ruling by the Administrative Court that the newspaper be allowed to reopen.
That ruling was not enforced while the state lodged its appeal.
Nare said the earlier ruling stood, even if state lawyers launched a fresh challenge.
Judge Nare said he was seeking police protection after receiving a threatening letter.
He gave a copy of the hand written letter to the newspaper’s lawyers. The letter accused him of bias ”against our good government” and of having been “bought to sell out our mother country.”
It warned a ruling in favour of The Daily News “will result in serious suffering by you personally and members of your family.”
“Take this as a mere threat at your own peril,” said the letter purporting to be from “War liberators and sons and daughters of the soil.”
Ruling party militants and veterans of Zimbabwe’s independence war that led to independence in 1980 have been blamed by independent human rights groups for much of the political violence that has wracked the country.
“We are watching you closely and will not stand idle if you collaborate with sell-outs like The Daily News,” the letter said.
Nare was assigned the appeal case when another Administrative Court judge withdrew after a state newspaper also accused him of bias against the government.
During a three year crackdown against the media and the judiciary, several independent-minded judges have been forced to resign.
Veterans of the liberation war and ruling party militants stormed the Supreme Court in 2000, accusing it of favouring opponents of the government’s often violent programme to seize thousands of white owned farms.
None of the attackers, who sent judges fleeing, were arrested. Police shut down The Daily News and seized its equipment in September after it was banned under strict media laws imposed by the government last year.
Since its launch in 1999, the Daily News has been a platform for criticism of President Robert Mugabe’s 23 year rule. The state controls the country’s two other daily newspapers, and the only TV and radio stations.
In January
2001, The Daily News presses were destroyed in a bomb attack hours after
Information Minister Jonathan Moyo described the paper as “a threat
to national security which had to be silenced.” - Press
Association
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