Mugabe cracks down on the media ahead of elections

Reporters without frontiers is reporting the presuure that journalists are put under by te regime of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.


With elections coming on the 29th March it reports

Journalists have been arrested, summoned and ordered to reveal sources, charged with “publication of false news” and newspapers threatened with closure if they fail to comply, in an upsurge of harassment that seriously threatens press freedom ahead of polling,” said.

and describes how

State security agents burst into the offices of the privately-owned weekly The Masvingo Mirror, on 9 February, demanding that they reveal their sources for two articles headlined, "Major Mbudzi ties the bell around the Cat’s neck” and "Makoni’s national surgical operation, Mbudzi speaks out". The articles which were carried in the 8 to 14 February edition, referred to the candidature of former finance minister Simba Makoni, now an opponent of President Robert Mugabe.