Since the turn of this century Zimbabwe has topped the list as the most repressive country in the SADC region in terms of media freedom violations. MISA has recorded 360 alerts in Zimbabwe in the four-year period from 2000 – 2003. In 2003 the alerts from Zimbabwe represented 54% of the total recorded in 10 countries and in 2002, 57% of the total in 11 countries. In research conducted of MISA’s action alerts during 2003 to determine the main trends of media freedom violations across the region, an important finding was that the same trends of media freedom violations that occur in Zimbabwe, also occur in many other countries of the SADC region, but not to the same extent. Vigilance is therefore required by all. The main regional trends over three years (2000 – 2002) were: • The arrests of journalists • Restricting the freedom of movement of journalists (the expulsion of foreign correspondents and the physical obstruction of indigenous journalists from covering news events in their own countries, even press conferences, and including their forced removal from some outlying districts and provinces of their countries) • Threats to journalists, including death threats • Direct censorship including the closure of publications and the cancellation of broadcasting programmes • • • • • • • Police raids on media institutions and the seizure of recording equipment from individual journalists in the field Physical attacks on journalists Repressive media freedom legislation Frequent verbal attacks on the media by governments and politicians Governments and authorities flouting the rule of law by ignoring court orders or acting in clear violation of laws Attacks on newspaper vendors and the destruction of newspapers, and Pressure on journalists to reveal confidential sources of information. There appears to be a cautious note of optimism in Tanzania and in Swaziland that the future may hold better things, but in other countries like Zambia and Malawi, the situation remains much the same. The overall number of alerts has decreased from 208 in 2002 (and 207 in 2001) to 188 during 203, a decrease of 9.7% since the previous year. A new feature of the alerts, however, is a gender component in terms of which media violations are broken down to show how many men and women were affected by violations of their media rights. In 2003, 15 female and 72 male practitioners were affected. This figure is in line with the Gender and Media Baseline study which indicates that women constitute approximately 20% of news rooms in the region. For that reason MISA cannot stipula te whether or not male reporters are priority targets of media freedom violations. The alerts for 2003 reveal the emergence of new themes of professional importance to journalists and to MISA (or new vigour in pursuing them). These include the increase of civil defamation cases against the media and concerns about the high financial penalties being awarded to successful litigants, the emergence of more independent media councils (voluntary media complaints bodies) or attempts to do so, the establishment of national editors forums, increasing concerns about the wages and working conditions of journalists, the struggle for the appointment of statutory but independent broadcasting authorities, developments around the introduction of Access to Information legis lation, and the rise of media civil society coalitions (including associations of journalists in the state owned media) for media freedom advocacy and legal MISA Annual Report (April 2003 – March 2004) 35