The Press Freedom Day on the 3rd May, celebrates the fundamental principle of press freedom. The day draws the attention to this important freedom and honours all the efforts undertaken globally to protect it. Free media plays a crucial role in building consensus and sharing information. It is essential to democratic decision-making and to social development. Press freedom should, therefore, not only be viewed as the freedom of journalists to report and comment, rather it is also strongly linked to the public’s right of access to information.
MISA Mozambique, one of the Embassy of Sweden’s partner organisations within the AGIR programme, commemorated this day by organizing an event with the theme “Be vigilant with power: media, justice and the rule of law”.
The event was opened by the President of MISA Mozambique, the UNESCO Representative in Mozambique, the Swedish Ambassador, the Secretary General of the Journalism Union and the Vice-Minister of Justice. All opening speeches expressed alarm at the deteriorating situation for press freedom and freedom of expression in Mozambique with references to the fact that Mozambique fell six positions within the Reporters without Borders index from 2016 to 2017. With the recent attack of the journalist Ericino de Salema in March 2018 the negative trend seems to continue. The speeches also underlined media as one of the required pillars for democracy and that attacks against journalists are criminal acts that should be treated as such and for which impunity cannot be an option.
For the principal panel other partner organisations from the AGIR programme, i.e. CIP, CEC and OAM, also reflected on the theme of the event. The panel produced thoughts on the need for public information to be accessible to the public, that media outlets (public and private) have a role to inform not misinform the public, that journalists need to permanently scrutinize the government for the interest of the public, that media has an important role to play in the upcoming elections and that the government needs to be responsible for the safety of journalists. The audience was, amongst others, made up by parliamentarians, civil society organisations, public and private media outlets, academics and journalist students.
During the event the latest report by MISA Mozambique on the status of press freedom and freedom of expression during 2016-2017 was presented. It corroborates the global indexes: in terms of violation of press freedom MISA were made aware of 11 cases in 2016, but 21 cases in 21. The Embassy of Sweden is currently supporting MISA Mozambique with core support through the AGIR programme until 2020.
