‘OBSERVER’ BACKS SWAZI HATE GROUP

A new hate group has launched in Swaziland with the support of the Swazi Observer.

A group calling itself the Prolife Movement in Anglophone Africa (PMAA) was given a full page in the Observer yesterday (Wednesday 27 February 2008) to highlight what it says are the ‘evils’ of
- Condoms
- Sex education
- Radical feminism
- Homosexuality, and
- Abortion

The Observer allowed a spokesman purporting to be the ‘regional coordinator’ of the PMAA to spout dangerous nonsense such as ‘condoms may even be one of the main reasons for the spread of HIV and AIDS’ and the use of condoms ‘may lead to certain deaths’.

The Observer gave the ‘spokesman’ the opportunity to say that ‘radical feminism’ had the ‘potential to increase the rate of abortion, substance abuse, homosexuality and lead to moral decadence of society’.

At no point did the Observer require the PMAA to offer one shred of evidence to support its assertions.

Also, PMAA claimed to be already present in 82 countries around the world with the aim to be in every country by 2010.

I don’t know who this PMAA is because when I searched for it on the Internet its name didn’t appear. Not on any of the general search engines I used, nor in search engines for news articles, nor in search engines for blogsites. And all of this despite the organisation’s claim to be in 82 countries around the globe.

So who are the members of PMAA? The Observer article claimed that it has connections with the Catholic Church and the Salesians in Manzini.

By publishing this nonsense from PMAA the Observer has broken the very first article of the Swaziland National Association of Journalists (SNAJ) Code of Conduct, which states it is the duty of every journalist to write and report, adhere to and faithfully defend, the truth.

To properly serve the public, a journalist should make adequate inquiries, do cross-checking of facts in order to provide the public with unbiased, accurate, balanced and comprehensive information, the code states.

The Observer has also broken Article 6 of the same code of conduct. Article 6 states that a journalist shall not originate material which encourages discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, colour, creed, gender or sexual orientation.

It also contravenes Article 13 on ‘hate speech’, by publishing material that might promote hatred, spite and conflict.

I would like the Observer to tell its readers more about PMAA. Some of the questions its reporter could ask PMAA are: who are your leaders? Where does your finance come from? Why are you such a shadowy organisation? Why do you tell deliberate and dangerous lies about condoms and HIV AIDS?

The Observer has disgraced itself by publishing this propaganda for an extreme organisation that has one aim only and that is to spread hatred throughout Swaziland.