Beatrice Mtetwa, one of Zimbabwe's top human rights lawyers, said on Friday that she had pressed assault charges against a police officer who arrested her this week after she had undergone an attempted hijacking and was repeatedly punched, kicked and strangled for over three hours.

The government controlled media’s monopoly of daily news output since the banning of The Daily News was again highlighted this week by the superficial and distorted nature of its coverage of the police crackdown on labour protests and the illegal detention of the South African High Commissioner to Zimbabwe by new farmers. Zimbabweans no longer have any mass circulating daily alternative source of information and therefore cannot so easily assess the truth of events as reported in the government media. But it needs no comparison to state that the accounts of both incidents in The Herald and on ZBC reflected only official opinion and reported vaguely on the two events, says the latest update from The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe.

Four more journalists from "The Daily News" have been charged by police for practicing without accreditation, as required by the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIIPA). The four Bulawayo-based journalistsare Chris Gande, Oscar Nkala, Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu and Grey Chitika.

Women with AIDS face neglect and prejudice all over the world. Many are denied healthcare during pregnancy or forced to have abortions. Some are sent away by their husband's family to their parents' home. How can their situation be improved? The International Community of Women living with HIV/AIDS set up a research project to find out the needs of HIV-positive women in Zimbabwe. Following the project these women were better able to represent the rights of HIV positive women and play an active role in raising AIDS awareness in their communities.

The secretary-general of the Commonwealth, Don McKinnon, has denied that there is a rift within the 54-country body over how to deal with the Zimbabwe crisis. McKinnon said that the standard story about "the Commonwealth countries in the West taking a tough stance on Mugabe", while the African members treat him with kid gloves, is inaccurate.

Zimbabwe's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party said on Monday police had charged its chief spokesman with organising national protests intended to force President Robert Mugabe to quit. On Monday MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi said police had now charged him under harsh security laws.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has signed into law the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act (AIPPA Amendment), which seeks to correct certain anomalies that came to light after the law was promulgated in 2002. The new act redefines Section 2 of the principal act. The term "mass media service" or "mass media", which hitherto had been unclear, has been defined as "any service, media or medium consisting in the transmission of voice, visual, data or textual messages to an unlimited number of people and includes an advertising agency, publisher or, except otherwise excluded or specially provided for in this Act, a news agency or broadcasting licensee as defined in the Broadcasting Services Act".
Related Link:
* As Zanu PF now knows, propaganda does not sell
http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=7741

"The police vehicle stopped in the Nyamandlovu area and all the trade unionists were blindfolded before the vehicle turned into the bush to a spot where the trade unionists were told to disembark from the vehicle. After disembarking from the police vehicle, the trade unionists were taken to another place where they were asked to take off their shoes. They were severely assaulted all over their bodies and made to chant Zanu PF slogans."

This week, six defiant words - "The Daily News will be back" - appeared at the top of The Daily News’ new Website, promising readers the battle is far from over. Following the paper’s September 12 closure, the main Website was stripped of its stories. However, people from around the world continued to use the Web site’s interactive chat page to keep each other informed of the situation and voice their opinions.

A vigilante group attacked Cyril Zenda, a senior journalist with the "Financial Gazette" newspaper, on October 3, robbing him of
5000 Zimbabwe dollars (approx. US$6) and his mobile phone. Zenda told MISA-Zimbabwe that he was spotted by a vigilante group known as Chipangano when he disembarked from a bus at Harare's main bus terminus. He said the group pulled him to a secluded area and began interrogating him about the message on a MISA-Zimbabwe t-shirt he was wearing.

Following the gagging of The Daily News and its sister Sunday paper, The Standard and The Zimbabwe Independent have now clearly become the next targets of the Department of Information’s campaign to muzzle all alternative views under the pretext of “enforcing the law”. According to The Standard, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo and Media and Information Commission chairperson, Tafataona Mahoso, threatened to take action against the two papers, which Moyo described as the “running dogs of imperialism”. This is according to the latest edition of the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe weekly media update.

It's been months since Noma, a cancer patient at Mpilo, the largest government hospital here, has gone for radiotherapy. The process is meant to stop the cancer in her leg from spreading. But five months ago the only machine used by patients in three provinces - Matabeleland, Masvingo and Midlands - broke down and there is no foreign currency to import spares. Mpilo Hospital has also run out chemotherapy drugs.

The world anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI), says that Zimbabwe, one of Africa’s wealthiest nations that has sadly been reduced to an economic basket case, is accelerating towards being one of the worst corrupt countries in the world, giving another twist to the screws on a country already bruised by negative international perception.

The food crisis in Zimbabwe is worsening, with a majority of the country's districts having exhausted their food stocks, according to a UN report received on Friday. "According to reports from 58 districts in August 2003, food is becoming scarce, harvest stocks have been exhausted in a majority of districts and over half report a deteriorating food situation," the report said. The report comes a week after the UN's food agency warned that only a quarter of its appeal for funds to feed millions of starving people in southern Africa, most of them in Zimbabwe, had been met. An estimated 5.5 million Zimbabweans will require emergency food aid by early next year, out of a regional total of 6.5 million. This is one of the stories in the latest Zimbabwe Update for the beginning of October. The Zimbabwe Update is produced by ZIMCIVINFO in support of democracy, peace and civics in Zimbabwe.

Norway has dropped Zimbabwe from its select list of main development aid recipients because of the deterioration in governance there.

A fire has devastated vast tracts of Zimbabwe's Matopos National Park and is threatening many of its wild animals. Reports say that three-quarters of the central part of the 43,000 hectare park has been engulfed by a raging fire that has forced hundreds of wild animals to flee the flames.

At least 200 trade union activists were arrested on Wednesday for participating in protests against soaring prices and high taxes in the latest crackdown on dissent in the troubled southern African country.

Reporting to the Southern Africa Programme Manager (SAPM), the Zimbabwe Liaison Officer (ZLO) will work to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of CIIR / ICD's programme in Zimbabwe. The postholder will be supporting CIIR / ICD's skillshare and advocacy work in the country. She/he will also be expected to help the SAPM to maintain a broader perspective of the Southern Africa Region. The ZLO will provide supervision and support to CIIR / ICDs Development Workers (DWs) and maintain and build key partnerships with local partner organisations in response to CIIR / ICD's HIV & AIDS and disability strategies for Zimbabwe.

The cost of health care in Zimbabwe finally went beyond the reach of most people this month when medical drug suppliers and pharmacies hiked prices by more than 1,000 percent, citing an increase by the same margin in import costs.

There's still time to "prevent the twin spectres of starvation and destitution" from occurring in Zimbabwe, said the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in a plea for more assistance from donors. UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Zimbabwe, J. Victor Angelo, said the generous support of aid efforts in 2002/03 had saved lives but that "the relief needs in Zimbabwe have increased in 2003”.