4 August 2009 Zim News Flash
Written on August 4, 2009 by Emily
Human Rights Violations Against Women and Truth Commissions
A report by the Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU) in Zimbabwe.
This report looks at how African countries have dealt with violations against women in post-conflict situations. Particular attention is paid to the processes in South Africa, Kenya and Sierra Leone in terms of addressing women victims’ rights to reparations and redress.
Click to read report
South Africa’s Zuma to Contact Zimbabwe’s Mugabe on ‘Weighty’ Problems
South African President Jacob Zuma says he will be contacting Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on problems affecting the unity government in Harare. Mr. Zuma was commenting after a meeting in Johannesburg with Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai who briefed him on the current situation in Zimbabwe following the establishment of a unity government earlier this year. “I will be contacting his excellency President Mugabe on the matter, as well as the leader of another party, [Arthur] Mutambara, on the issues that the prime minister has raised. But also I will contact our colleagues in the region to sensitize them on what the prime minister has briefed me on; with the sole aim of saying how we could continue working together to make quick progress in Zimbabwe,” Said Mr. Zuma.
‘Media freedom means upholding the law’
Zimbabwe’s former chief media policeman, Tafataona Mahoso, told a parliamentary committee that should he be selected to head a new media commission he would ensure that journalists operated within the confines of the law. Mahoso - dubbed the “media hangman” by Zimbabwean journalists – oversaw the closure of five privately owned newspapers and instigated the arrest of scores of reporters during his time as chairman of the government’s now defunct Media and Information Commission (MIC). He has applied to join the planned Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) that Zimbabwean journalists, human rights groups and pro-democracy activists hope will work to free the media after years of strict government controls.
Zimbabwe opposition politicians arrested
Recent arrests of opposition Zimbabwean members of Parliament are a coordinated strategy to intimidate them, Zimbabwe Finance Minister Tendai Biti says. Biti said Movement for Democratic Change politicians arrested for such offenses as playing pro-MDC music in their cars or the theft of mobile phones are not coincidences but a well-organized campaign to cripple the opposition, Radio France Internationale reported Monday. “The arrests … and convictions of our members of parliament is not accidental,” Biti told the French broadcaster. “The efficiency and the speed in which the prosecutions are taking place is not normal, the fact that these things are being done with such vigor, such exuberance, such energy — and also uniformity — so there’s absolutely no doubt that these are engineered prosecutions.”
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