Media practitioners have expressed outrage at the arrest of Sunday Mail Editor Mabasa Sasa, his investigations editor Brian Chitemba and reporter Tinashe Farawo over the publication of a story implicating an unnamed top police officer in a cyanide poaching scandal which has left about 60 elephants killed in Hwange.
BY MOSES MATENGA
The practitioners were also angered by an appeal by the police for Sasa and his two journalists to provide information that would lead to the arrest of an Assistant Commissioner and other culprits involved in the syndicate.
They said the demand for journalists to review their sources was both unprofessional and unconstitutional.
Police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba insisted the journalists should assist the police with identifying the said culprits.
Sasa and two reporters are being charged for publishing falsehoods prejudicial to the State.
“We actually want The Sunday Mail journalists who wrote the article to assist the police to identify this so called Assistant Commissioner so that the law can take its course if at all there is an Assistant Commissioner involved in poaching activities. We are more than interested,” Charamba said. “As a result, the ZRP demands that the three journalists who are involved in this article have a national duty to assist police identify the alleged culprits in order to get to the bottom of the matter instead of sensationalizing a serious matter.”
But Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) said the Constitution clearly states that every person is entitled to freedom of the media, which freedom includes protection of the confidentiality of journalists’ sources.
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ZUJ secretary-general Foster Dongozi said there was no need to arrest the journalists in the first place.
“I thought they will be arresting poachers in Hwange, but I was shocked to hear that they were at Herald House arresting journalists,” he said.
The Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe condemned the arrest of the journalists and the demand for them to review sources.
Charamba was at pains to explain whether the country was not under siege from a foreign syndicate since they had failed to properly investigate the killing of more than 100 elephants in the past years as the illegal act still continued.
