An international press freedom watchdog on Thursday called for Ethiopia to abandon new "draconian" media laws which could result in more journalists being jailed. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also urged the authorities to "stop harassing" reporters in the country and allow them more freedom to work.

The Gambian parliament passed a tough media bill on Wednesday, two months after President Yahya Jammeh refused to sign an earlier version and returned it to the legislators for amendment. The bill was passed by 53 votes to three, with members of parliament from the ruling party castigating the independent media for being "unpatriotic" and always reporting "the bad side" of the government.

Jonathon Moyo, the Minister of State for Information and Publicity, should be prosecuted by an international court for inciting racial hatred in his country, journalists from six different African countries said last week at a workshop on conflict resolution in Grahamstown, South Africa.

Cosatu came to the SA Communist Party's 11th Congress in a fighting mood on Wednesday, while the African National Congress sought to subdue tensions in the tripartite alliance.

The International Secretariat of the OMCT has been informed by ASADHO Kinshasa, a member of the OMCT network, of the dismissal of seven workers and the impending dismissal of a further 10,000 workers by a company called La Gécamines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We request you kindly to write to the authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo asking them to take all necessary measures to guarantee the respect for economic, social and cultural rights and labour rights of the workers.

The Media Monitoring Project deplores the flagrant disregard for the due process of the law demonstrated by The Herald, which convicted opposition MDC MP Learnmore Jongwe of murdering his wife before any trial by a court in its editorial comment on Tuesday, July 23rd.

The killing of Rutendo Muusha-Jongwe was a terrible act of domestic violence that cannot be condoned. But in The Herald’s efforts to link this tragic incident to political violence and the silence of Western nations, the newspaper demonstrated its contempt for the proper administration of justice by usurping the work of the court in declaring that Rutendo had been murdered.

The paper declared:

“His (Jongwe’s) butchering of a defenceless woman is quite telling of the MDC’s disposition towards human rights…

“Unfortunately, violence begets violence and the chilling murder of Rutendo has shown how this violence is now being directed against its own innocent women.”

In this grossly unethical attempt to manipulate a personal tragedy for political gain, the paper ignored the regulations relating to the administration of justice and the fundamental constitutional right that every individual is entitled to a fair trial. For this reason any public comment likely to prejudice this right is forbidden and would constitute contempt of the court charged with conducting the trial.

The emotional nature of The Herald’s editorial and its repeated use of the word “murder” evidently ignores this basic rule and amounts to an unacceptable conviction by the media.

It was not the only paper to commit this basic offence: The Sunday Mirror carried a picture of Rutendo on its front page under the heading “Brutally Murdered” and compounded this error in the first sentence of its news story about the incident: “MDC Member of Parliament for Kuwadzana Judah Learnmore Jongwe who brutally murdered his wife is now facing murder charges.”

The reporter’s unequivocal statement, that the MP had murdered his wife, clearly pre-empts any court verdict on the matter and similarly constitutes an erosion of the right to a fair trial.

These are examples of unethical journalism at its worst and MMPZ expects justice to be dispensed accordingly.

It is not the first time such offences have been committed by Zimbabwe’s media and even public figures.

MMPZ believes that if Zimbabwe is to avoid becoming a country governed by the law of the jungle, it is the duty of the media and those in authority to bring an end to this gross affront to the administration of justice.

The matter in which Daily News editor Geoff Nyarota and reporter, Lloyd Mudiwa are being charged with publishing falsehoods has been adjourned while the magistrate's court decide on an application by the defense lawyer for the matter to be heard in the Supreme Court. Mudiwa and Nyarota's lawyer, Chris Andersen argued on Monday 22 July, that the trial should be heard in the Supreme Court as it dealt with constitutional matters such as freedom of expression and protection of the law.

The Nigerian parliament, the National Assembly, has been called upon to promote transparency and accountability in the country by urgently passing the Freedom of Information Bill currently before it. The call formed part of the resolutions of a recent workshop on 'Contentious Issues in the Review of the 1999 Constitution' organised in Abuja by the Citizens' Forum for Constitutional Reform (CFCR), a network of civil society organisations.

A paralysed Kenyan journalist is seeking compensation from the Kenyan authorities following an incident in 1991 when police threw him out of a fourth-floor window, the media watchdog Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) reported. Wallace Gichere, the-then chief photographer of the government-owned 'Kenya Times', was beaten and thrown out of the window by a group of 15 Special Branch members who broke into his Nairobi flat to arrest him, RSF official Jared Obuya told IRIN on Wednesday.

Robert Sebufirira, editor-in-chief of the privately-owned weekly "Umuseso", and two of the newspaper's reporters, Elly MacDowell Kalisa and Godfrey Munyaneza, were arrested and jailed in Kigali on 17 and 18 July after witnessing an incident of police brutality.

Zimbabwe's refusal to respect Article 19 of the Declaration of Human Rights is, once again, in the news. This alert from the Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC) notes the ramifications of international media freedom violations for journalists publishing online.

Family Health International's Female Condom Information Dissemination Project provides scientific, objective, and unbiased information on programmatic implications of the female condom. Our research and dissemination focus on sub-Saharan Africa. The Project produces and disseminates research briefs, via listservs, target mailings, conference presentations at selected conferences, and the Internet.

This article from the new Social Source Newsletter takes a good, practical look at easing into open source in your organisation.

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has introduced an innovative system aimed at preventing corruption at its offices.

How should you organise the information on your web site? Read this article for a new insight into how visitors understand your content, and try to repeat the experiment to measure useability.

Ever thought of creating a mini-community in your area? This discussion on Slashdot provides ideas about internet cost-sharing that can make net access affordable for you and your neighbours.

This article in First Monday explores the ways in which non profit organisations are using the Internet and technology to build communities and fulfill their missions.

Worried by the procrastination the Freedom of (Access to) Information Bill (FOIB) has suffered at the lower chamber of the National Assembly, stakeholders last week in Abuja strategised on how to urgently get the bill passed.

On 10 July 2002, Tewodros Kassa, former editor-in-chief of the Amharic-language weekly "Ethop", was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. The charge resulted from three 2001 "Ethop" newspaper articles.

On 16 July 2002, RSF denounced the censoring of the 13 July issue of the independent Arabic-language daily "Al-Horreya" ("Freedom") and called on the Sudanese government to cease such "arbitrary persecution" of the country's independent newspapers. "This measure demonstrates that despite the president's ending of prior censorship last December, official pressure on the independent media continues," RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Husein.