Stop Genocide in Zimbabwe

April 28, 2006

Driving through Zimbabwe listening to the radio, or watching television in the evenings, all you see or hear is Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, the state controlled media. "They will tell you there is no choice as a journalist as there is just nowhere to work and times are hard - so in the end they just take their salary and lie.

The government knows that it has the votes wrapped up because it can get to them with radio and television and it has absolutely prohibited any form of opposition in that territory. When Zimbabweans start to demonstrate the papers are not going to say they have killed demonstraters.

President Mugabe has banned BBC and other foreign journalists from the country, what is he hidding?. All broadcasters transmitting from Zimbabwean soil and the main newspapers are state-controlled and toe the government line. The private press, relatively vigorous in its criticism of the government, has come under severe pressure.

State-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) operates the country's only TV and radio stations. ZBC formerly had two TV channels; its second network was leased to private station Joy TV which closed in 2002. Some of its programmes were said to have ruffled government feathers.

Radio is the main source of information for many Zimbabweans. Although there are no private stations, the country is targeted by overseas-based operations. The Voice of the People, set up by former ZBC staff with funding from the Soros Foundation and a Dutch NGO, operates using a leased shortwave transmitter in Madagascar. Another station, the UK-based SW Radio Africa, aims to give listeners in Zimbabwe "unbiased information". The station's signal was jammed in March 2005, a period coinciding with the run-up to parliamentary elections.

From the US, the government-funded Voice of America (VOA) operates Studio 7, a twice-daily service for listeners in Zimbabwe which aims to be a source of "objective and balanced news". But the rural community has no access to information at all and Mugabe wants it that way he is the onlyone who can tell them everything and anything including lies.