Mozambique: Journalists protest against crimes on media personnel - Watch
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Misa Moçambique, a press freedom organisation, fears that there are people in power in Mozambique who will be capable of threatening journalists during the upcoming elections, Ernesto Nhanale, executive director of the organisation told Lusa.
“There are still people in Mozambique with an authoritarian culture” making decisions “in the centres of political, military and police power”, he said in an interview two months after the kidnapping and beating in Maputo of journalist and political commentator Ericino of Salema.
Ernesto believes that there are “enough reasons to fear” that violence and repression of journalists may happen again, “especially as we approachan election period.”
“Elections pose a risk to journalism, as political parties want a positive image of their work. They do not want setbacks,” he said. But “the role of journalism is to monitor and not kow-tow to political power.” Cases such as that of Ericino de Salema stand out most, but MISA records other incidents in the country where journalists have been targetted and says there are more which go unnoticed.
Asked who these figures that pose a threat to press freedom are, Nanhale responds with a description of scattered people who are acting on their own initiative. “Deep down they are scattered people. No one ever met formally to say, ‘Do this, but that’. We believe that they are people who, enjoying their individual position, feeling a certain type of threat” or “being exposed, use what power they have and the positions they represent to carry out these forms of coercion”.
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