Johannesburg - The Foreign Correspondents Association of
Southern Africa (FCA-SA) on Thursday condemned the Zimbabwean
government's decision to bar most of its members from covering the
country's elections Saturday.
In a statement the FCA-SA blasted 'the near blanket denial' of
accreditation requested by its members. The FCA represents 192
journalists from 122 media outlets around the world.
'No reasons were given by Zimbabwean authorities for the refusals
but a survey of FCA-SA members indicates that the rare approvals were
given according to race or nationality,' the statement said.
'This is of course unacceptable. And it would be quite naive to
imagine that the coverage would be more lenient if carried out by
writers, photographers and TV crews of a specific origin,' the
statement continued.
'When the government rejects all fears of a rigged election, why
is it trying to shield these elections from the vast majority of
professional journalists,' the association asked.
Journalists from several southern African media outlets have been
accredited to cover the polls.
Germany's ARD television, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
Canadian daily the Globe and Mail and Spanish daily El Pais were
among the few Western media houses to receive accreditation, which,
at between 1,700 and 1,800 dollars per person, was seen as
deliberately prohibitive.
Two weeks ago, George Charamba, permanent secretary in the
Zimbabwean ministry of information, accused Western countries of
seeking to send journalists to the elections as a 'monitoring
surrogate.'
Western election observers have been barred from monitoring the
polls.
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