>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 13:31:45 -0200
>From: Graham Hopwood <graham@namibian.com.na>
>To: Multiple recipients of list <misa-news@wn.apc.org>
>Subject: Nam-Editorial comment on Zambia
>
>
> From The Namibian Tuesday March 5
>
>Editorial comment
>
>Chiluba government
>sinks to new depths
>
>THE indefinite imprisonment of Zambian journalists, Bright Mwape and Fred
M'membe, in maximum security jails, constitutes a brutal attack on the
principle of freedom of speech.
>It is absurd that a Speaker of a supposedly democratic parliament can
sentence journalists to an indefinite prison sentence for the `crime' of
criticising an MP in a newspaper's opinion columns.
>Speaker of the Zambian parliament, Dr Robinson Nabulyato, may claim to be a
democrat but his actions indicate he is nothing more than a crude tyrant.
>Ironically he is a member of a party which calls itself the Movement for
Multi-party Democracy, but recent events have shown that the government of
Frederick Chiluba has very little if any understanding of the tenets of
democracy.
>We have read the `offending' opinion columns and they are nothing more than
the kind of robust, pointed editorial comment we see every week in
newspapers in Namibia.
>The fact the Chiluba is using British colonial laws designed to suppress
anti-colonial sentiment prior to Zambia's independence clearly indicates the
depths to which his regime has sunk.
>If democracy and respect for human rights are to mean anything in southern
Africa, then the governments, journalists, NGOs and individuals of the
region have to intervene in this situation for the sake of the jailed
journalists and freedom of speech. - The Namibian
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