RadioBanter - Zim jams private radio station

20 March 2005

Cape Town - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government is jamming
broadcasts to Zimbabwe from a London-based pro-democracy radio station, an
independent media monitoring agency said on Sunday.

The Zimbabwe Media Monitoring Project (MMPZ) said the government was using
sophisticated Chinese equipment to block out broadcasts from Short Wave
Radio Africa, run by a group of exiled Zimbabwean press freedom activists.

The watchdog quoted a report by the Washington-based federal International
Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which said the jamming appeared to emanate from
Thornhill, a military airbase and state communications centre in the central
city of Gweru.

Three jammers were being used to scramble the SWRA's three shortwave
frequencies, according to the IBB.

The British Broadcasting Corporations Monitoring Services also confirmed the
jamming operation. "The interfering signals were present only for the period
of the SWRA programming," said a spokesperson.

The station has resumed broadcasting on different frequencies.

SWRA began operating in 2001, after the supreme court abolished a state
monopoly on radio services. However, it was shut down after only a few days
and subsequently shifted to London. The government later passed laws to ban
private radio and television stations.

For three hours daily, the station broadcasts news and editorials mostly on
the country's political situation in a bid to provide an alternative to the
government-controlled public press and broadcasting networks.

The three public radio stations and one television station publish blatant
ruling party propaganda and racist hate speech, according to media freedom
activists.

The government's jamming operations against SWRA were "a deliberate assault
on the freedom of expression" and denying the public the right to
information especially in the run-up to scheduled parliamentary elections on
March 31, according to the MMPZ.

In total 92% of the state election coverage is positive reporting on the
ruling party's campaign, while the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
received only 6% of all coverage, th MMPZ said in a report last week.

The latest disruption followed earlier moves against independent media. The
campaign has seen a Dutch-based radio station in Harare destroyed by a bomb
and four independent newspapers banned, including the independent Daily News
which also suffered bomb attacks.

Scores of journalists, editors and media proprietors have also been arrested
under press-gag laws introduced in 2002, which prescribe a sentence of up to
two years for "working illegally as a journalist."

Visiting foreign correspondents have been almost totally banned, and nearly
all of the country's locally-based journalists reporting for foreign media
have been deported or driven out of the country.

The Zimbabwean government is among the world's 10 worst offenders against
press freedom, according to the New York-based International Committee to
Protect Journalists.

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