Maputo — The Mozambican chapter of the regional press freedom body MISA (Media Institute of Southern Africa) has expressed its great concern at the physical and verbal attacks against media professionals during the current wave of demonstrations against allegedly fraudulent election results.
One of the most recent attacks took place in Maputo last week when a group of demonstrators threw stones against a vehicle of Radio Mozambique. A radio worker was injured and the car suffered damage.
Also last week, Ernesto Martinho, a reporter on the independent television station “TV Sucesso’ received verbal threats over social media to his own physical integrity and that of his family. Some of the threats came from state employees.
On 26 October, added MISA, the director of the State Intelligence and Security Service (SISE) in Mecanhelas district, Niassa province, Domingos Erasto, threatened reporters who were covering demonstrations in Mecanhelas town.
Erasto seized equipment from reporters of the Sucesso and Amaramba television stations and from Radio Esperanca. For several hours the reporters demanded the return of their equipment. It was eventually returned, but not before Erasto had told them of his anger that they had recorded the demonstrations, and showed the police opening fire on the protesters.
A press release from MISA said the organization strongly discourages such attacks against journalists. “As a society, we cannot allow the political differences we are living through to cost us such civilizational gains as press freedom’, it declared.
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“Journalists should not be confused with the protagonists of the situations we are experiencing’, said MISA. “Journalists are the professionals we most need at this time of crisis to provide us with credible information about the events unfolding around us. Instead of attacking these messengers, we must protect them’.
“By attacking media professionals, we are not solving our problems’, MISA pointed out. “On the contrary, we are plunging still further into the darkness. Regardless of whether we disagree with the editorial line of particular media, attacking the press is unacceptable, and not worthy of civilized people’.
Attacks on journalists posed a serious threat to democracy itself and so MISA is urging the authorities “to adopt measures to guarantee the safety of journalists and to protect their work’.
MISA also urged journalists themselves to adopt a still more professional stance, and to remember that “their role is to report the facts and not to become the protagonists of events’.
