|
Unrepentant Mapuri is told off
2005-09-17 07:30:34
By Guardian Reporter
The Media Owners Association of Tanzania (MOAT), journalists’ associations, the civil society and human rights organisations have reacted angrily to the Home Affairs minister’s latest statement, saying it was a futile public relations exercise that lacked the moral substance to assuage the victims of the mistreatment by prison warders and inmates.
Instead, the organisations poured cold water on Omar Ramadhan Mapuri’s bid to explain his position and called for his dismissal for throwing journalism into disrepute in addition to the indignity he had caused the government by sidestepping the issue for which the media had demanded his apology.
In a joint meeting held yesterday shortly after Mapuri issued a statement saying his utterances had been taken out of context, the organisations unanimously upheld journalists’ decision to give the minister a blackout until he and Principal Commissioner of Prisons Nicas Banzi issued a proper apology and condemned the Ukonga beatings.
The organisations said the boycott of the minister’s functions would remain in force until he renounced his support for the prison warders’ and prisoners’ inhuman conduct.
They said that while the minister had admitted that the warders and inmates had unleashed terror on civilians and reporters, ’he does not apologise for the beating of the journalists’.
The statement noted that Mapuri had not said anything about his earlier statement regarding the prison warders and prisoners who beat up and injured the journalists.
In the previous statement, the minister said the journalists were to blame as they had ventured into a restricted area.
In the minister’s press statement that was distributed to newsrooms yesterday after journalists refused to attend a press conference he had called in his office, the minister said he had followed the unfolding scenario closely and reached the conclusion that he had been misunderstood.
Journalists also wondered why it had taken the minister such a long time to realise that he had been misunderstood.
The journalists who were battered by inmates and prison warders had gone to the Ukonga residential area to cover the evictions of tenants from houses previously owned by Air Tanzania Corporation limited(ATCL).
The minister said that his September 12 statement gave the impression that he had given the inmates and prison warders the blessings to manhandle their victims.
|
