A special edition of Zimbabwe’s banned Daily News was published in Nigeria to coincide with the Commonwealth conference at Abuja.
The 48-page Abuja edition appeared within the Sunday edition of This Day, a Nigerian newspaper with a 100,000 circulation. It featured stories from back issues of the Daily News, highlighting human rights abuses and the harassment of the media and opposition politicians.
The Daily News was forced to close after armed police raided its Harare offices in September. It reappeared for one issue last month, only to be forced to close again by Robert Mugabe’s regime. The paper is fighting in the Zimbabwean courts to be allowed to register for a licence to publish.
The Abuja edition can be seen on the paper’s website, www.daily-news.co.za.
The Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organisations this week accused the Zimbabwe Government of abusing the rule of law and using every device, legal or otherwise, to prevent the Daily News from reappearing.
In a resolution passed at a meeting in Geneva, the committee condemned “the actions by the Zimbabwe Government against the Daily News and the threats against other newspapers as gross violations of the principles of press freedom contained in the Zimbabwean constitution.”
By Jon Slattery
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