Mozambique: Police Harasses Journalists

The Mozambican police have being harassing reporters who visit Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the country’s main opposition party, Renamo, at his residence in the northern city of Nampula, the independent daily “O Pais” reported on 10 February 2010.

 

Ever since Dhlakama threatened that “Mozambique will burn”, immediately after his defeat in the 27 October 2009 general elections, police have been stationed outside his Nampula house, keeping an eye on his movements. But recently the police have taken an interest in journalists visiting Dhlakama for merely professional reasons, and detaining them illegally for hours. According to “O Pais”, the latest reporter to suffer such harassment was Nelson Carvalho, a correspondent for the weekly paper “Savana”. On 4 February 2010, he was held by the police for two hours after he left Dhlakama’s house.

 

Carvalho said that he identified himself as a journalist, but the police still demanded to know what he had been doing in Dhlakama’s house. Carvalho phoned the spokesperson for the Nampula provincial police command, Orlando Mudumane, and asked him to intervene and secure his release. But Mudumane simply advised him to obey the demands of the police, because “if you’ve done nothing wrong, they’ll let you go”.

 

A phone call to the head of operations at the police station next to Dhlakama’s house was equally fruitless. Eventually, after two hours, the police agents released him without any explanation for their behavior. The same thing happened to Anuncio da Silva, Nampula correspondent of the newssheet “Canal de Mocambique” on 7 January 2010. Silva went to Dhlakama’s house at about 16h00 and waited for three hours for an interview which never happened.

 

He left at 19h00 after been detained by the police. He too showed all his identification documents, but the police insisted on searching him and demanded to know whether Dhlakama was at home or not. Two hours later they released Silva.

 

Meanwhile, Mudumane told the local media that he did indeed receive phone calls of complaint from both Silva and Carvalho, but he had no official information about the matter.

 

MISA Stand

 

MISA condemns the action by the police and calls on the police to stop their actions and preserve the rights of the media in Mozambique. The media should be given the right to access information and approach any source they wish to interview. These rights are not only limited to the Mozambique legislation but are also enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, to which Mozambique is a signatory. It is also a well known fact that accessing and imparting information of any nature is a benefit to any person the world over, and any obstruction to that is justice denied to people’s’ rights to know. 

 

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Reagan Malumo

Programme Officer: Media Freedom Monitoring and Research

Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Regional Secretariat

21 Johann Albrecht St

Private Bag 13386

Windhoek

Namibia

Phone: +264 61 232 975

Fax: +264 61 248 016

Mobile: +264 81 311 2626

Official Email: reagan@misa.org

Private Email: reagan32002@yahoo.com

 

- February 12, 2010 by  Reagan Malumo

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Source : www.misa.org (received via email alert on 12.02.10)