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The editor of Zambias leading independent newspaper will tomorrow appeal against a sentence of four months hard labour for publishing a critical story about a trial involving one of his journalists.
Fred Mmembe, the editor and owner of the Post, was convicted of contempt of court last week for publishing a commentary piece while the trial was still in progress. After sentencing on Friday he was denied the chance to post bail.
Supporters of Mmembe, who won the International Press Institutes World Press Freedom Hero award in 2000, say the decision is politically motivated. The Post has a history of criticising the government, particularly over corruption.
Mmembes case relates to the controversial trial last year of Chansa Kabwela, the Posts news editor. During a national nurses strike, Kabwela had been given photographs of a mother giving birth on the ground outside Lusakas main hospital, where she had gone after reportedly being turned away from two other clinics. The child suffocated after being delivered in the breech position.
Kabwela did not publish the pictures, but sent copies to the countrys vice-president, other ministers and womens groups. She said that she wanted to highlight the effect of the industrial action on public health services, and to put pressure on the government to end the strike.
But President Rupiah Banda reacted with fury, describing the pictures, taken by the pregnant womans husband, as pornographic, and ordering Kabwelas prosecution. She was charged with distributing obscene material with intent to corrupt public morals.
Though Kabwela was acquitted last November, the government proceeded with a case against Mmembe. His crime was to publish, during the trial, an article by Muna Ndulo, a Zambian law professor at Cornell University in the US, which criticised the case as "a comedy of errors".
On Friday, Lusaka magistrate David Simusamba said that the story had threatened the work of the courts. "In order to reform the convict and deter others, I sentence you to four months imprisonment with hard labour," he said.
Many of the spectators in the courts public gallery shook Mmembes hand before he was led away.
In the 90s, Mmembes newspaper exposed abuses of power in then president Frederick Chilubas government.
After Levy Mwanawasa took power in 2002, Chiluba was prosecuted for corruption in Zambia and the UK, where a civil court found that he had stolen $46m in public money. But on Mwanawasas death in 2008, Chilubas fortunes rebounded.
He was acquitted by a Zambian court last year, and is seen as close to President Banda, whom he has endorsed for re-election in 2011. Like Chiluba, Banda has not tried to hide his dislike for the Post.
Guy Scott, an MP and deputy leader of the opposition Patriotic Front party, said the government was trying to "compromise" Mmembe. "Everybody with any independence of mind knows that this case against Mmembe is ridiculous. Its purely political," he said.
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