|
|
|
Last Updated: Friday, 25 January 2002 |
|
US funding pirate radio
station: paper Herald Reporter
THE United States is secretly
funding a pirate radio station in London, SW Radio Africa,
widely accused of fuelling political violence and tribal
hatred with its nightly broadcasts to Zimbabwe.
Millions of dollars are being channelled to the
station from a department of the US Agency for International
Development and the Office of Transition Initiatives,
according to a report in yesterday’s issue of the British
Guardian newspaper.
Britain has said the station,
which broadcasts three hours a night on short wave from
studios in Borehamwood, was legal under the British laws.
The station is headed by Gerry Jack-son, a British
national, who was sacked by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Corpora-tion five years ago. The team includes two Zimbabwean
presenters, Violet Gonda and Tererai Karimakwenda.
Jackson opened an illegal independent station in
Harare two years ago, which the police closed down after six
days.
The station's spokeswoman and former ZBC
presenter, Georgina Godwin, said that funding for the station
came from "human rights and media freedom groups", but would
answer no further questions.
The Guardian report said
that SW Radio Africa, which has been on the air for a month,
was giving the opposition a platform, providing an endless
diet of propaganda and falsehoods on the economic and
political situation in the country. "It has embarrassed and
irritated UK officials, who have publicly denied that Britain
plays any role in it,’’ said the paper.
The Minister
of State for Information and Publicity, Professor Jonathan
Moyo, has lambasted the BBC for providing the pirate station
with studios, transmitters and frequencies but the BBC World
Service director, Mark Byford, says the BBC has no connection
with it.
Diplomatic sources, said The Guardian,
confirmed that OTI pays for the studios, equipment and airtime
on the transmitters of what the station calls a "global
communications provider".
The Voice of America, owned
by the US government, has transmitters in a number of southern
and central African states. The US embassy in Harare said it
could not confirm or deny Washington’s involvement.
Sadc heads of state and government, who met recently
in Blantyre, Malawi, expressed concern over the fact that some
Western countries had authorised broadcasting from their
territories.
The Sadc leaders described the broadcasts
as hostile and inciting propaganda against the Government of
Zimbabwe.
A Zimbabwe delegation, which held
consultative talks with the European Union in Brussels earlier
this month, raised the issue of pirate radio stations
operating from UK and the Netherlands.
"If the EU
expects any co-operation from us, then it must clearly and
unequivocally condemn the illegal broadcasts to Zimbabwe by
Britain and the Netherlands,'' said Prof Moyo, who was part of
the Zimbabwe Government delegation to the EU talks.
|
|
|
|
© Copyright of
Zimbabwe Newspapers (1980) Limited 2001. Terms and Conditions
of reading. Commercial Information . Privacy Policy .
Information About
http://www.herald..co.zw/ |
|
![]()
|
