How Mugabe has fought to gag free speech

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* 20 August 2001 The Standard reveals the existence of a security services hit list of journalists "to be harmed or killed".

* 13 August 2001 Geoff Nyarota (above), editor in chief of the Daily News, is arrested with three reporters after he ran a story alleging that police vehicles were used in attacks on farms.

* 6 April 2001 Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, a former Ford Foundation employee, makes a court application to bar the Zimbabwe Independent from publishing details of a Ford Foundation civil suit against him.

* 10 March 2001 Njabulo Ncube, bureau chief in Bulawayo for the Financial Gazette, told by war veterans that he would be dead by the 2002 presidential elections.

* 28 January 2001 The printing press of the Daily News is bombed. Five days earlier, the Minister for Information, Jonathan Moyo, said the independent daily would be silenced because it posed a risk to the nation.

* 26 January 2001 Four Daily News journalists and Mark Chavunduka, from The Standard, are questioned over reports that a civil lawsuit had been filed in the United States against President Mugabe.

* October 2000 Independent radio station, Capitol Radio, is closed down by authorities during test transmissions.

* 1 April, 2000 Media Monitoring Project researcher Edwina Spicer detained.

* April 2000 Editorial offices of Daily News targeted with firebomb.

* 8 February 1999 Reporter Gracee Kwinjeh and publisher Dr Ibbo Mandaza of the Zimbabwe Mirror detained.

* 22 January 1999 Clive Wilson, managing director of The Standard, arrested. Amnesty International ranked him a prisoner of conscience.

* 12 January 1999 Mark Chavunduka (above) and Ray Choto of The Standard arrested and charged with "publishing a false story capable of causing alarm and despondency" after an article about an alleged military coup attempt. They were tortured in military detention.