HUMAN RIGHTS
(no name) ((no email))
Fri, 8 Mar 1996 09:16:48 -0500
Message-ID: <199603081416.JAA15129@outpost.ietc.ca>
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 09:16:48 -0500
From: "Georges Lessard's Mass Media Arts, Training, Creation,
Subject: HUMAN RIGHTS
To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
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>Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 14:28:46 +0000
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>From: Iain Christie <mailto:christie@christie.uem.mz>
>Subject: HUMAN RIGHTS
>To: Multiple recipients of list MEDIA <mailto:MEDIA@SOKRATES.MIP.KI.SE>
>
>The following article was distributed March 8 by the
>Mozambique News Agency (AIM). I thought it might be of
>interest to other journalists. Paul Fauvet is a British
>journalist who has edited the English-language service of AIM
>for six years. His first degree was in English literature and
>he holds a Phd in history. He speaks fluent Portuguese, the
>official language of Mozambique.
>Regards, Iain Christie, Maputo-based journalist since 1975.
>
> HUMAN RIGHTS THROUGH AMERICAN EYES
>by Paul Fauvet
>Maputo, 8 Mar (AIM) - The US State Department released its
>annual report on human rights in Mozambique on Thursday, and,
>as in previous years, this document is characterised by
>factual inaccuracies, and a heavy ideological bias.
> The State Department is under a legal obligation to
>provide the US Congress with annual reports on the human
>rights situation in every country in the world (with the
>exception of the USA itself).
> Inevitably the task of compiling these reports falls on
>the shoulders of US embassy personnel. But given the poor
>quality of the Mozambique report, the US congress would
>obviously be better off relying on those independent
>organisations that specialise in human rights, such as Amnesty
>International or Human Rights Watch.
> Substantial chunks of the document are recycled from the
>1995 report: this practice means that mistakes are handed down
>from one year to the next. The embassy staff seem to be under
>the impression that if it was in last year's report, it must
>be true.
> Thus the report claims that "the government has broad
>latitude to determine what constitutes a security offence" -
>which is exactly the same formulation as in the 1995 report.
>And it is untrue.
> Security offences are detailed in a 1991 law, which
>gives precise definitions of such crimes as high treason,
>espionage, terrorism and sabotage.
> Attempts in 1991 to reintroduce the dangerously vague
>terminology of the discredited 1979 security legislation were
>defeated. Former security minister Sergio Vieira, for
>instance, wanted +rumour mongering+, +acts that offend against
>international peace+, and even +insulting the flag+ to be
>included as security offences.
> The Mozambican parliament threw all this out, and Vieira
>was publicly rebuked by the then Justice Minister Ali Dauto,
>who stressed that security laws must not contain +imprecise
>terms+.
> All this is a matter of public record, but it seems that
>the US embassy cannot be bothered to consult Mozambican public
>records.
> What makes it worse is that this section in the report
>was publicly criticised last year by the President of the
>Supreme Court, Mario Mangaze. He pointed out that the
>Mozambican system works with the almost universally accepted
>principle that nothing can be a crime unless the law defines
>it as such.
> +The government cannot invent crimes+, he stressed. But
>such comments undermine the conventional wisdom in the US
>embassy and so are conveniently ignored.
> The US report also omits the significant fact that there
>have been no security trials since 1992, and the last person
>tried for such an offence, the former armed forces chief of
>staff, Gen Sebastiao Mabote, was acquitted.
> Also taken word for word from the 1995 report is the claim
>that +the executive, and by extension the Frelimo party,
>dominates the judiciary. In general judges are beholden for
>their positions to the Frelimo Party+.
> In reality, the position is a lot more complex than that.
>The US report claims that President Chissano appoints all
>members of the Supreme Court. In fact, Chissano only has a
>free hand in naming the president and deputy president of the
>court.
> The other judges are appointed from a list submitted to
>the President by the Supreme Council of the Judicial
>Magistrature (CSMJ), the body in charge of the legal
>profession, which is independent of all state powers.
> The law severely restricts who can appear on the CSMJ
>list: they must be fully qualified judges with at least eight
>years experience, and whose performance the CSMJ has qualified
>as "good" or "excellent".
> Furthermore Chissano, or any future head of state, cannot
>sack a Supreme Court judge. They stay at their posts until
>retirement age. Only the CSMJ has the power to take
>disciplinary action against judges.
> But, exactly as in 1995, the CSMJ is not mentioned in the
>American report, and the US embassy seems unaware of its
>existence.
> It is, of course, in the US where Supreme Court judges
>are appointed for political reasons, and where we witness the
>unedifying spectacle of a would-be presidential candidate (Pat
>Buchanan) proudly announcing that he would stuff the court
>with judges who would deprive American women of the right to
>abortion.
> Last year Mangaze claimed that the Mozambican court
>system contains better guarantees of independence than the
>American one. He declared that he was prepared to debate this
>matter in public. No-one in the US embassy took up this
>challenge.
> A further input from the 1995 report is the claim that
>+the Frelimo government has traditionally included at all
>levels a disproportionate number of southerners, mostly from
>the Shangaan ethnic group+.
> The clumsiness of the report is shown by the fact that
>the very next sentence contradicts this, admitting that all
>provincial governors now come from the provinces they rule.
>(In fact there is an interesting exception to this which the
>embassy does not mention -the only province not governed by a
>local figure is Maputo City. The mayor, far from being a
>southerner, comes from the northernmost province of Cabo
>Delgado.)
> Furthermore, an analysis of the government appointed by
>Chissano after the 1994 elections shows that the President
>took great care to ensure an ethnic and regional mix. But the
>embassy disdains the simple task of finding out where members
>of the government come from.
> The report repeats the claim that it was only at its third
>congress, in 1994, that the trade union federation, the OTM,
>elected its president and general secretary. Previously they
>were government appointees, it alleges. Wrong.
> The OTM's top officials have always been elected. At the
>first congress the election was typical of trade unions in
>single party regimes, and would thus be criticised by the US:
>but an election, even a single party one, is not the same
>thing as appointment.
> At the second congress, in 1990, the OTM elected its
>leadership by secret ballot.
> The OTM's statutory requirement calling for independence
>from influence by companies, governments, political parties or
>religious groups is not new, as the report claims, but dates
>from 1990.
> As usual, the worst section in the report is on the
>Mozambican media. This claims that +the government dominates
>the media through direct control of, and subsidies to, the
>most important means of reaching the public+.
> Once again, the US embassy shows that it does not
>understand the concept of the public sector, and the
>legitimacy of state funding for public service media (which is
>far from peculiar to Mozambique - such highly respected
>institutions as the BBC in Britain or AFP in France are
>publicly funded). The assumption is that, if it's not
>privately owned, it must be doing the government's dirty work.
> The report lumps together, as +government owned+. Radio
>Mozambique and Mozambican Television, which are indeed in the
>public sector, and the Maputo papers +Noticias+ and +Domingo+,
>which are not.
> The two papers are owned by a company whose major
>shareholder is the Bank of Mozambique - if the US embassy
>believes that this owership structure somehow determines
>editorial policy, then let them show some evidence of this,
>rather than making tendentious assertions.
> As for AIM, the report cannot even translate the name
>properly. On every bit of headed paper AIM has used for the
>past decade and a half, the English name has been +Mozambique
>News Agency+. But the report prefers to call AIM an
>+Information Agency+, which sounds much more +official+ and
>suspicious.
> In a casual insult, the report says +local journalists+
>largely regard AIM +as an outlet for propaganda+. Really ?
>Which local journalists ? Here the embassy seems to have
>relied exclusively on one hostile article that appeared in the
>weekly paper +Savana+ a few months ago.
> The report has to admit that there is no censorship: but
>it suggests that this is unnecessary since the journalists are
>just a bunch of lackeys. +The official media know their limits
>and generally do not criticise government officials or
>policies+, it claims.
> Even the most cursory glance at the media disproves this.
>The embassy, of course, knows that officials have come under
>press attack - so to explain this it invents a conspiracy.
> +Two ministers did become the target of press campaigns+,
>it admits, +but this was less a break with past practice than
>evidence that they were out of favour with the retrograde
>faction of Frelimo that has the most influence on the press+.
> So journalists can't win. If they don't criticise
>ministers, it's because the media are controlled by the
>government. But if they do criticise them, then they are being
>manipulated by a faction of the ruling party.
> AIM has asked US embassy staff who the members of +the
>retrograde faction of Frelimo+ are. Not surprisingly, the
>diplomats have named no names - probably because they have no
>real idea what is going on inside Frelimo.
> In the past, the US tended to interpret any political
>change in Mozambique as a victory or a defeat for +hardliners+
>or for +the pro-Moscow faction+. With the collapse of the
>socialist bloc, such +explanations+ are no longer tenable, so
>we have a new variant, and a new conspiracy, with the
>invention of +the retrograde faction+.
> Ironically, despite the insults heaped on the supposedly
>+official+ press, the US report is heavily dependent on that
>same press for much of its sections on the police and the
>prison system. Thus when the public sector media, or
>+Noticias+, reports police abuses they suddenly become
>reliable sources.
> Finally, there is one significant omission from the US
>report. It says next to nothing about human rights abuses
>committed by the former rebel movement Renamo.
> Thus there is not a word about the October incident in
>which Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama ordered the abduction and
>public humiliation of Rui Frank, Frelimo first secretary in
>the central district of Gorongosa, nor about the difficulties
>Frelimo has faced in working politically in zones that were
>once under Renamo military control.
> In short, this is an inaccurate, shoddy and superficial
>piece of work that tells its readers more about the prejudices
>of the US embassy than about human rights in Mozambique.
>(AIM)
>--
>Iain Patrick Christie
>
>
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* "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." Gandhi *
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You make the world you move through
as you move through the world that makes you.
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Original material (c) 1996 George Lessard