Shut up, unless you fawn

摘要

Most Zimbabwean papers either fawn over the regime or severely censor their criticism. The Daily News was an exception: recently it dared to report that Robert Mugabe was building himself a palace outside Harare. But on September 12th, the police marched into the newspaper's offices, chased out the staff at gunpoint and tried to arrest the editor, who had refused to register under a draconian media law passed last year. After a judge, known to be friend of Mr Mugabe's, ruled last week that the law is constitutional, the police pounced.