The editor of Zambia’s leading independent newspaper yesterday appealed against a sentence of four months’ hard labor for publishing a critical story about a trial involving one of his journalists.
Fred M’membe, the editor and owner of the Post, was convicted of contempt of court last week for publishing a commentary piece while the trial was still in progress. After sentencing on Friday he was denied the chance to post bail.
Supporters of M’membe, who won the International Press Institute’s World Press Freedom Hero award in 2000, say the decision is politically motivated. The Post has a history of criticizing the government, particularly over corruption.
M’membe’s case relates to the controversial trial last year of Chansa Kabwela, the Post’s news editor. During a national nurses’ strike, Kabwela had been given photographs of a mother giving birth on the ground outside Lusaka’s main hospital, where she had gone after reportedly being turned away from two other clinics. The child suffocated after being delivered in the breech position.
Kabwela did not publish the pictures, but sent copies to the country’s vice president, other ministers and women’s groups. She said that she wanted to highlight the effect of the industrial action on public health services and to put pressure on the government to end the strike.
But Zambian President Rupiah Banda reacted with fury, and described the pictures, which were taken by the pregnant woman’s husband, as pornographic, and ordered Kabwela’s prosecution. She was charged with distributing obscene material with intent to corrupt public morals.
Alhough Kabwela was acquitted in November last year, the government proceeded with a case against M’membe.
His crime was to publish, during the trial, an article by Muna Ndulo, a Zambian law professor at Cornell University in the US, which criticized the case as “a comedy of errors.”
On Friday, Lusaka Magistrate David Simusamba said that the story had threatened the work of the courts.
“In order to reform the convict and deter others, I sentence you to four months’ imprisonment with hard labor,” he said.
Guy Scott, a member of parliament and deputy leader of the opposition Patriotic Front party, said: “Everybody with any independence of mind knows that this case against M’membe is ridiculous. It’s purely political.”
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