DEATH THREATS AGAINST TIMES SUNDAY EDITOR, REPORTER

MBABANE – Serious threats of grievous bodily harm, possibly even leading to death, have been made against Times SUNDAY senior reporter Mfanukhona Nkambule and the publication’s Editor Innocent Maphalala.

The threats emanate from a story the publication is pursuing regarding one of the country’s security forces which has engaged in an action that has compromised this country internationally.
Specific details of the story in question will not be published for now. However, it is on record that there have been several attempts to block the publication of the story and the editor, together with the reporter, made it known that they would go ahead with the article.

Further attempts to engage the Times Managing Editor, Martin Dlamini, and the Publisher, Paul Loffler, also failed to convince this publication to drop the story.  Even though the people who issued the threats remain faceless, they threatened that should the story see the light of day, the duo risked being eliminated.

The warning was conveyed directly to the Times Sunday editor by a concerned citizen, who is a highly placed government official and has insight to what could be going on behind the scenes. This citizen, who will not be named, pleaded with the editor to drop the story if he wanted to live.

What has made the situation more complex is the death threats cannot be reported to the Royal Swaziland Police (RSP) because their input is required in the story.
Dlamini condemned such tactics with the contempt they deserve. He stated that this displayed serious bullying of the media, something which had no place in a civilised society.
“We are not taking the threats lightly; we will be raising them with all our stakeholders locally and internationally. We further call on government to ensure that the country is not subjected to negative scrutiny for violations of press freedom,” he said briefly.
Information sourced from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) website shows that 48 journalists were assassinated in 2016, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
These three countries were plagued with political unrest for a better part of the past year.

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