Zambia / Africa

  

CPJ joins call urging Zambia to maintain internet access during elections

The Committee to Protect Journalists joined 41 other human rights, free expression, and technology organizations in a letter to Zambian President Edgar Lungu, calling on him to ensure that the internet and digital communications remain uninterrupted throughout Zambia’s August 12 general election period. In the letter, dated August 5, members of the #KeepItOn coalition against…

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Supporters of President Edgar Lungu's party celebrate his re-election in August. The country's press has been harassed during Zambia's election year. (AFP/Dawood Salim)

For Zambia’s press, election year brings assaults and shut down orders

Zambia’s press has come under sustained assault in this election year, with station licenses suspended, journalists harassed or arrested for critical coverage, and one of the country’s largest privately owned papers, The Post, being provisionally liquidated in a move that its editors say is politically motivated.

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Taxi drivers read the news of President Michael Sata's death in The Post special edition on October 29, 2014 in Lusaka. (AFP/Chibala Zulu)

Mission Journal: In Zambia, Sata never fulfilled promise of greater transparency

“We’ll see for ourselves on Friday,” was a refrain on the lips of most journalists I met in Lusaka in mid-September, as they speculated on the health of President Michael Sata ahead of their country’s opening of parliament, where the leader was due to speak.

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President Michael Sata's mounting attacks on the press have had a chilling effect on freedom of expression in Zambia. (AFP/Simon Maina)

Zambia silences critics with lawsuits, Web blocking

The charges leveled against a Zambian journalist suspected by authorities of being linked to the blocked news website Zambian Watchdog make for interesting reading.

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A bid to rid Africa of criminal defamation, sedition laws

The African Union’s special rapporteur on freedom of expression and access to information, Commissioner Pansy Tlakula, has launched an auspicious initiative in East Africa to counter criminal defamation and sedition laws. Since independence, authorities and business interests in the East and Horn region have used criminal laws on sedition, libel, and insult–often relics of former,…

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Chansa Kabwela speaks to reporters. (Thomas Nsama)

Zambian editor acquitted in hospital ‘obscenity’ case

As the news editor of Zambia’s largest circulation newspaper and a mother to two young children, Chansa Kabwela already has her hands full. For the last four months, however, this 29-year-old journalist was mired in a court case with a peculiarity that made international headlines and sparked a debate on press freedom in this landlocked nation in southern Africa. The case…

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(Collins Phiri/The Post)

Press freedom slips in Zambia

In Zambia, the coming week will mark the anniversary of the untimely death of President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa. The late president had championed press freedom with his commitments to reform, and, with his passing, the Zambian media lost an ally. Worse, the media freedoms gained in recent years are now slipping. 

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Media reform stagnates in Zambia

On September 27, the High Court in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, granted acting President Rupiah Banda an injunction restraining The Post newspaper from publishing libelous words against him. Zambia’s Sunday Times reported that the court had also given a penal notice to Editor-in-Chief Fred M’membe to comply with the order. M’membe refused and appealed to the…

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