Maputo, 6 Jun (AIM) – The journalist abducted by police in central Maputo on Tuesday night, Sheila Wilson, has been released, but the camera stolen from the independent television station STV has not yet been returned.
According to Adriano Nuvunga, director of the Centre for Development and Democracy (CDD), the organisation that employs Sheila Wilson, she was released on Wednesday, after spending the night in the cells of the Maputo fourth police precinct.
The police gave no reason for seizing her and did not charge her with any offence. When she asked why she had been incarcerated, a police officer said he was “following orders”.
Wilson was one of several journalists covering the demonstration outside the United Nations officers by hundreds of former members of the long defunct state security service, SNASP. They had been demonstrating for the past week, claiming that the Mozambican state has owed then demobilization pay for the past 20 years.
When reporters attempted to speak to the former SNASP members, they came under attack from the police. Dozens of police, and at least 15 police vehicles had gathered outside the UN compound. This show of force included a police dog unit, and members of the Rapid Intervention Unit (UIR – the Mozambican equivalent of the riot police).
Without any explanation, the police ordered the journalists to stop their work. But the demonstration was in a public place, and all citizens had the right to film the event and interview those taking part.
Wilson was transmitting live images of the demonstration and the police attack to the feed of CDD director Adriano Nuvunga. The effect of her illegal detention was to silence temporarily the CDD.
Although many of the ex-SNASP protestors were elderly, and presented no conceivable threat, the police forced them to disperse. While this was happening, the STV crew interviewed the Maputo city police spokesperson, Leonel Muchina.
But in the middle of the interview, a group of four men in plain clothes, and using a vehicle without any number plates, attacked the STV team and grabbed their camera.
Although the area was swarming with police agents, none of them lifted a finger to stop the theft of the STV equipment, and the thieves drove off in possession of the camera. The general assumption was that this was no ordinary theft and that the thieves were members of the police.
STV submitted a complaint “against persons unknown” at the nearest police station, but by Thursday morning, the camera had not been recovered.
Muchina insisted that the police did not know who the thieves were, but was now working to neutralize them.
The Mozambican chapter of the regional press freedom body, MISA (Media Institute of Southern Africa) issued a statement “condemning, in the most vehement terms, these serious assaults against the freedoms of the press and of expression”.
The seizure of journalists’ equipment, as they were working, “is a flagrant violation of press freedom, which cannot be tolerated in a democratic society”. The incident was even more serious when committed before the apparent indifference of a contingent of police officers.
MISA urged the authorities to investigate and to hold those involved responsible for their actions. Clearing this case up, MISA added, could end the suspicion that those who seized the camera were themselves members of the police.
The Higher Mass Media Council (CSCS), the constitutionally enshrined watchdog on press freedom, warned that attacks on journalists and the seizure of their equipment were an assault against the rule of law and against the fundamental freedoms expressed in the Mozambican constitution.
The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) took much the same position, and promised to investigate “the truth of the facts in order to hold their authors responsible”.
(AIM)
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