Zimbabwe Flattens What Little Freedom of the Press Remained
by Ian Mosley
On May 3rd, some media outlets around the world celebrated a UN-sponsored holiday called World Press Freedom Day. (Other media outlets and newspapers didn’t bother. The UN has never been very successful in creating interesting artificial holidays.) Okay, so May 3rd was when the world was supposed to celebrate freedom of the press, where it exists, which nowadays isn’t very far and wide. It doesn’t exist at all in Robert Mugabe’s Marxist dictatorship in Zimbabwe, the former Rhodesia. There journalists who criticize “Comrade Bob” or his cronies, especially foreign journalists, are in for a very rough ride.
Journalists in Zimbabwe have had their basic rights systematically criminalized over the past decade, to the point where it is now for all practical intents and purposes impossible for a newspaper or television reporter to do his job and accurately report to the public what is going on around them. In a recent press statement the Media Institute of Southern Africa, a bunch of left-wing newspaper and TV people in South Africa who issue a lot of press releases under the odd delusion that anyone gives a damn what they have to say, stated: “Sadly for Zimbabwe, the past seven years have seen freedom of expression being downgraded from a right to a privilege that can only be exercised at the benevolence of the authorities.” The obvious solution to Zimbabwe’s problems–military intervention, the forcible removal of Robert Mugabe and his public execution is unthinkable for most Western leaders even though executing Saddam doesn’t seem to bother George Bush or Tony Blair. (more…)