· ALERT Date: December 01, 2005 Persons/Institutions: Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL) Violation: Threatened The Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL) has called on the Namibian government to enact laws to rein in journalists who, the SPYL alleges, are abusing the freedom of the press. SPYL Secretary for Information Elijah Ngurare said on December 1, 2005 that the abuse of the freedom of the press in Namibia had reached intolerable and unacceptable levels. In particular reference to reporting by a national Afrikaans-language daily, “Die Republikein”, and the weekly “Windhoek Observer” on events surrounding the discovery of war graves in northern Namibia, Ngurare said that such journalism was near to “threatening national security and interest”. “Our Swapo Government is hereby called upon to urgently and expeditiously institute a credible regulatory framework to regulate the activities of all these cancerous, racist and parasitic media operators in our country, which regulation after all is a standard practice worldwide, particularly after [the] September 11 [terrorist attacks],” said Ngurare. He maintained that the media were “regurgitating things that don’t exist” and had a “new notion of democracy”. Ngurare opined that the media were engaged in a covert campaign to unseat Nujoma as party president. Ngurare said it was the government’s duty to pass laws to restrain the operations of the media. He maintained that around the world such legislation was in place and that the media in “civilized nations” did not report in the way that Namibian journalists did. So This Is Democracy? 2005 -96- Media Institute of Southern Africa