Daily News Shut Down
Zimbabwe police shut down private newspaper

12th September 2003

Zimbabwean police closed down operations at the country's only private daily newspaper on Friday night, a day after the Supreme Court ruled that the newspaper group was operating illegally.

Francis Mdlongwa, editor-in-chief of the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), said the police descended on the newspaper's offices in central Harare and ordered staff out.

The ANZ publishes the Daily News and its sister Daily News Sunday. Mdlongwa said editor Nqobile Nyathi and the operations manager had been taken to a police station.

"The situation is that right now, we have been closed down. This is an unprecedented attack on press freedom because after the court decision yesterday, we had made it clear that we were going to comply with the law and register," said Mdlongwa.

"We know that Zimbabwe is collapsing and that there's an attack on independent institutions but we never thought that they would go this far. This is totally unacceptable," he added.

Zimbabwe's Supreme Court Thursday rejected a challenge by the ANZ over a media law seen by critics of President Robert Mugabe as designed to silence them.

The Daily News has been operating without a license in defiance of the law passed in 2002. The ANZ had refused to apply for a license in protest against the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

In its ruling, Zimbabwe's highest court said ANZ should have complied with the law by registering to operate a newspaper before launching its challenge.

The government-appointed Media and Information Commission which is charged with licensing media houses, said Thursday it could by law slap a fine on ANZ or confiscate its equipment.

"We are surprised they are doing this because we had no intention whatsoever to defy the law," Mdlongwa said.

The newspaper has been in operation for about three years and is accused by the government of being a mouthpiece of the opposition.

More than a dozen journalists have been charged under the law, which was signed soon after Mugabe's controversial re-election last year, among them several Daily News staffers and the former correspondent for Britain's Guardian newspaper, who was deported earlier this year.

CNN