| Case against MCL boss stalls again | Send to a friend |
| Thursday, 22 December 2011 22:12 |
 By Bernard JamesThe Citizen Reporter Dar es Salaam. For the second day running, police failed yesterday to take to court the acting managing director of Mwananchi Communications, Mr Theophil Makunga. They want to enjoin him in a case in which two journalists are charged with inciting mutiny. Police said they wanted to interrogate him some more on the technicalities of newspaper printing. He was initially to be charged on Wednesday, but police asked for a day to prepare a charge sheet and other documents required to formally charge the senior journalist—apparently because heavy rains in Dar es Salaam had disrupted the gathering of evidence and preparation of the charge. Mr Makunga reported at Central Police station early yesterday, only to be told he had to record an additional caution statement as the police wanted to satisfy themselves of the correctness and legality of the case they want to bring against him. The police are reportedly keen to establish the connection between Free Media, which publishes Tanzania Daima, and MCL, which prints the newspaper. Police want to enjoin Mr Makunga in the case in which a columnist with the privately-owned Tanzania Daima, Mr Samson Mwigamba, and the newspaper’s chief editor, Mr Absalom Kibanda, are accused of authoring and publishing an article inciting soldiers to mutiny. The two denied the charges. Concerns have been raised over the legality of charging Mr Makunga, who is neither the author nor the editor of the article and only heads a company that has a contract to print the newspaper. Police plan to charge Mr Makunga in his personal capacity and not as an employee of MCL, which has entered into a contract with Free Media to print the newspaper. “I wonder why they want to charge me and not MCL,” Mr Makunga said. “It is disturbing, and I feel that it is quite unfair to bring a case against me instead of my employer.” Media practitioners have been calling for the scrapping of laws like the one holding printers responsible for content which they would not normally gain access to before printing. “The content is electronically sent to the printer and the printer cannot easily have access to that content before printing…so the owner of the content is the one who is supposed to be held accountable for any query,” said a city lawyer who asked not to be named. Activists and media practitioners have fiercely criticised the case and cautioned that draconian laws are a threat to freedom of the press and are likely to tarnish the country’s image. The Media Council of Tanzania (MCT) issued a statement on Tuesday in which it said: “We would not want to interfere with judicial proceedings but MCT would like to caution the government to desist from using outdated laws to deal with media problems.” Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
