Thread by @NewFrame_News

[1/17] 'New Frame' press statement:
Friday 9 July 2021
PR operation to mask repression in eSwatini

[2/17] Magnificent Mndebele and Cebelihle Mbuyisa, the two 'New Frame' journalists who were assaulted and tortured in the Sigodvweni police station in eSwatini on Sunday 4 July, are in Johannesburg.

[3/17] After a full debriefing, it is clear that the torture to which they were subjected was worse than we initially understood when only limited communication was possible via the quick use of a borrowed phone while the two were in hiding.

[4/17] We were also disturbed to learn that the police were searching for Mndebele and Mbuyisa when they were in hiding on the night after our lawyer secured their release from custody, and again the next day.

[5/17] We would like to note our deep appreciation for the statements of solidarity for Mndebele and Mbuyisa received from various organisations in South Africa, including @SAEditorsForum , Pan Africa Today, @Numsa_Media and Abahlali baseMjondolo,

[6/17] As well as the @pressfreedom and progressive publications in Argentina, Brazil, Ghana, India, the United States and Tunisia.

[7/17] We repeat our call for national and international solidarity with Mndebele and Mbuyisa, with all journalists and activists facing repression in eSwatini, and for immediate and full democratic freedoms in that country, including the right to a free press.

[8/17] We also note that there is an organised effort to deny the plain fact that our journalists were tortured in the Sigodvweni police station and to circulate an entirely and demonstrable false account of events.

[9/17] This includes an article published in the ‘Swazi Observer’ on 7 July and correspondence received by the Swaziland Editors Forum. Tibiyo Taka Ngwane, the organisation that owns the ‘Swazi Observer’, describes itself as being “held in trust” by King Mswati III.

[10/17] The Swaziland Editors Forum is widely understood to function in support of the state in a country in which journalists are subject to severe, well known and widely documented repression, including torture and imprisonment.

[11/17] ‘New Frame’ has also been contacted by Vuma Reputation Management, a public relations firm based in Rosebank, Johannesburg. This PR firm represents the interests of the eSwatini state.

[12/17] It has also contacted journalists in other media organisations with the aim of bending the narrative towards the interests of a highly repressive police state, a state that has recently murdered numerous activists – figures range from around 40 to more than 70.

[13/17] We condemn the publication of demonstrable untruths in the ‘Swazi Observer’, the circulation of demonstrable untruths by the Swaziland Editors Forum, and the attempts by Vuma Reputation Management to “manage” the reputation of a murderous and systemically dishonest

[14/17] dictatorship. There is a long and sordid history of PR firms working to legitimate tyrannical forms of power. Before its collapse after the Gupta scandal in South Africa, the English “reputation management” firm Bell Pottinger was contracted to

[15/17] undertake what its long-time head Timothy Bell called “the dark arts” for, among others, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and the Pentagon following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

[16/17] We call on all South African media organisations to keep a critical and principled distance from Vuma Reputation Management and any other PR firm working in the interests of violently repressive dictatorships.

[17/17] For more information, please contact associate editor Monica Laganparsad on 082 578 6111. #eSwatini #eSwatiniProtest #JournalismIsNotACrime