Maravi

MMD cadres vow to continue violence

MMD cadres vow to continue violence
Written by Ernest Chanda
Monday, August 03, 2009 12:16:22 AM

LUSAKA Province MMD youth chairman Chris Chalwe has declared that the party cadres will continue to “sort out” Post journalists in their own way. But Post journalist Chibaula Silwamba, who was beaten up by Chalwe, has declared that no one would force him to go against his principles of professional journalism.

And Post managing editor Amos Malupenga has said MMD cadres are behaving like hunting dogs that have been released to annihilate Post journalists.

During a CBC Television special interview on Thursday night, Chalwe said going to the courts of law to complain against The Post was a waste of time. Chalwe attacked and beat up Silwamba who had gone to Lusaka International Airport to cover President Rupiah Banda’s return from a Smart Partnership Summit in Uganda.

Asked why MMD cadres could not go to court to seek redress if they were aggrieved with the manner in which The Post was covering President Banda, Chalwe said MMD cadres had their own way of operating.

“We are not taking the law into our own hands. If we wanted to take the law into our own hands, we would beat up those Post reporters. You would see them with scars, swollen heads. We are not above the law ourselves. We are law-abiding citizens also. All we are demanding is for them to be more professional in the way they report. And we are not going to sit back; today they insult, tomorrow they insult. How many times are we going to go to court? We have got our own way of operating as cadres,” Chalwe said. “…If we want to go to court, we will go to court. We are not saying we cannot go to court. We can go to court, yes, but how many times are we going to go to court; every day from January to December we have to go to court? And how many cases are going to be before the court? The court has more serious business to attend to than Post journalists.”

Chalwe declared that cadres would not allow The Post to make President Banda a laughing stock.

“Yes, all the people have a right to know what is happening to the President because he is a Republican President. We are not going to allow The Post to make the President a laughing stock. This is not negotiable. I must make it very clear…anybody who wants to make the President a laughing stock, insulting whatever. I’m sorry we are not going to be good friends,” Chalwe vowed.

Asked what had offended the cadres about the way The Post was reporting, Chalwe accused the newspaper of choosing pictures that dented the image of the MMD.

“You know, of late, The Post has turned out to be an opposition political party because of the way it is reporting, bias reporting; that is against the President, Mr. Rupiah Banda and the MMD itself. We have always extended an olive branch to them so that we work together. We know they have a duty to disseminate information to the nation at large. Now the way they’ve conducted themselves has been very, very unprofessional. I might call that as verbal assault on the party and the President,” Chalwe said. “They have become a political party and their intention is to bring the MMD and its leadership down as far as they are concerned. For example, you saw the picture from Mutomboko. You mean there were no other pictures that were taken there? Only that mother of ours, the chitenge slips and then the cameraman goes to see what is inside of the mother and they bring that as a headline. Like now they are portraying that mother went there to actually show the President what was inside the mother. What type of reporting is that? Let’s be more professional journalists.”

When reminded that photojournalism was about taking pictures that told a story, Chalwe accused journalists of throwing away traditional values.

“…us as Zambians we have got a tradition and culture that we follow. If you guys as journalists you have thrown away the traditional and culture, those values that we have here in this country as Zambia then I’m afraid you guys you will be lost. You can see even that picture of a mother who is delivering, is that what you call proper journalism?” asked Chalwe. “Some of these things, you have to know what to publish and what you cannot publish. There were other pictures that were taken. Accidentally, if that chitenge flips from that mother of ours, does that guarantee you to say this is the right picture to make the news; there are no any other pictures apart from that one? There’s another case where the President was seated alone in Livingstone, they bring Dora’s picture and they cut, they do the graphics and they say oh, they sat with the President!”

Chalwe declared that MMD cadres would not allow Post journalists to cover President Banda anywhere.

“We didn’t want Post to cover the President and we are not going to allow them to do that. They would rather be covering a president of their own, or the party of their own. If they want to be covering Rupiah Banda and MMD, they must change in their reporting. We went there [at the Airport] to ask for their IDs [Identity Cards], their colleagues produced the IDs them they were hiding. They scampered for safety because of their unprofessional way of reporting,” Chalwe said. “That is final because The Post, as far as we are concerned as MMD Lusaka Province youths, they have turned themselves into a political party. And as such we will take them as a political party, an opposition political party.”

Asked who among the cadres was asking for identity cards and who gave them the authority to do so, Chalwe admitted having spearheaded the search.

“The youths, including myself, we wanted to know who the Post reporters were, that was the motive behind. We asked the Post reporters to leave, then they left. We know the law does not allow us to do that, but we have a duty as youths to protect our President and to protect the party from unscrupulous and biased reporting from The Post,” said Chalwe. “Yes, they did identify themselves, The Post reporters went. Of course there was a scuffle but nobody was beaten. As usual The Post reporting is biased... Even if something is straight, they will try to twist it as much as possible. You can see even the headline, ‘Thugs’! Have we ever stolen from The Post? As long as they don’t be professional, they will be biased, they will be insulting the President then we won’t be friends.”

But Chibaula Silwamba said it was insane for Chalwe and the MMD to deny that they beat him up.

“Everyone saw what happened at the airport. I think it is just insane of them to say they didn’t beat me, may be they’ve just seen that the situation is getting hot. This issue has attracted international interest. For your own information, between yesterday [Wednesday] 15:00 hours and today [Thursday] 14:00 hours, I have received about five calls from Western embassies accredited to Zambia. So you can see how much interest this issue has attracted outside the country,” said Silwamba. “To some extent, there are high levels of lawlessness among the MMD leadership, starting with the President of the party who is also the Republican President, Rupiah Banda. We do not do things to suppress an individual or to promote an individual. It doesn’t matter what they do to us. They can kill us but our beliefs will be continued by other people who will come after us. I don’t care if I was killed today because I know that what I believe in, there are so many people in the media fraternity who also believe in it. And I know that they will continue from where I will have left off.”

And Malupenga said MMD cadres were trying to justify their criminal acts.

“We have heard that allegation before where they accused us of being biased against their party and the Republican President. The bottom line is that they have resorted to violence because they want to intimidate us, they want to silence us. And everyone knows why they are acting the way they are acting. The President himself is on record so many times where he condemns violence in one breadth and condones it in another,” Malupenga said. “What do you make of the President’s statement where he is saying that ‘no I don’t support violence, but when you attack me you should know that I also have my supporters who can be annoyed and react?’ What is he saying? And so it is very clear that these MMD cadres are just behaving like hunting dogs. They know that their boss is watching somewhere and so they have to deliver. They have been released to go in the field and hunt The Post journalists. So they have to go back to the boss and say ‘these people who are writing whatever they are writing about you we have sorted them out on your behalf’.”

Malupenga said MMD cadres were not editors to decide what The Post should or should not publish.

“Unless the cadres are telling us that they have become editors of this newspaper; they can’t be telling us what to publish and what news angle we should take to a story. They should not tell us what the picture is. We decide what to publish, after taking into consideration all the professional concerns,” said Malupenga.

Labels: AMOS MALUPENGA, CADRES, CHRIS CHALWE, MMD, POLITICAL VIOLENCE, THE POST

posted by MrK @ 11:16 PM