Macmillan Mhone, journalist: “In Malawi, under the law of fake news or cybercrimes anyone can be arrested”

On August 15, 2023, the digital news portal Malawi24 published an investigation in which it reported that businessman Abdul Karim Batatawala, then pending trial for fraud and corruption, allegedly operated a network of companies involved in obtaining contracts and public tenders from the Government of the African country. Batatawala, who had already been arrested in 2021 by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on suspicion of fraud and money laundering, was being investigated, and therefore, was disqualified from obtaining those contracts.

In the eight months since then nothing has happened. Until Sunday, April 7, when journalist Macmillan Mhone, who was part of the investigation—but who, he assures, did not write the piece—received a call from the police summoning him to headquarters in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. Mhone (Lilongwe, 34 years old), who lives in Blantyre, in the south of the country, went to the police headquarters in his city the next day, where he was arrested under the Malawi Electronic Transactions and Cyber ​​Security Law on charges of “ publication of news that could cause fear or social alarm, spam cyber and extortion.” The next day, he was transferred to Lilongwe and released.

Press associations and human rights organizations have criticized the arrest. Reporters Without Borders describes it as “intimidation”, and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urges Malawian authorities to withdraw all legal proceedings against Mhone. The informant, who had not yet granted any interview, describes what happened in a telephone conversation.

Ask. This is not the first time journalists have been detained in Malawi. In April 2022, Gregory Gondwe He was detained in an attempt to force him to reveal his sources for an investigation in which he exposed alleged corruption in military supplies. This year, he had to go into hiding, threatened by the country's Defense Forces. Is there freedom of the press in Malawi?

Answer. Malawi is a country where there is freedom of expression and freedom of the press. You can write whatever story you want, and in most cases nothing will happen. Now, there are also certain limits, certain red lines. Under the fake news or cybercrime law, anyone can be detained without any explanation. I, for example, asked the police for explanations and they didn't give me any, they didn't tell me why they had detained me. The limits on press freedom here apply when the information published implicates the Government or companies linked to political power.

Q. You do not sign the story that led to your arrest. Is it the author?

R. As part of the team Malawi24 I worked on this investigation and was actually in charge of speaking with Mr. Batatawala, but I did not write the piece. The article is signed Malawi24 and my name doesn't appear anywhere.

Q. So why are they stopping him?

R. I keep wondering. When they summon me to the police station, the police ask me if I am the author of the article and I tell them no, but they don't believe me. After several hours of interrogation, they tell me that I am arrested, they force me to take off my shoes and belt and hand them my cell phone. After calling family and professional colleagues, they put me in the cell on the morning of April 8.

Q. The article for which he is arrested reports on a network of digital companies used by businessman Abdul Karim Batatawala to evade the law and secure public government contracts.

R. Yes, but the reason we published that news is that, at that time, Batatalawa was disqualified from obtaining these contracts because he was pending trial for crimes of fraud and money laundering. The Anti-Corruption Office had detained him in 2021 but, as our investigation revealed, he continued to operate through these intermediary companies to obtain public tenders, despite the legal restrictions against him.

Q. The article is published in August 2023. Why is it stopped now, eight months later?

R. I think what they wanted was to scare me and threaten me so that the article would be deleted from the website, which has not happened. According to what I have been able to hear from other journalist colleagues of the Malawi Investigative Journalism Platform, the report mentions a company, Bembeke Trading Limited, which may currently be negotiating multimillion-dollar contracts with the Government, and it is not in their interest for any trace of that news to appear. A company that, precisely, is linked to employees of Mr. Batatawala.

Q. Who do you think is behind this arrest?

R. What I know is that Batatawala complained to the police and they arrested me after that. The businessman demanded that the article be deleted, which – and I have no evidence of this – makes me suspect that he may continue operating from the shadows. In my opinion, a businessman like him has enough power to pressure the police to intimidate journalists, as has happened to me.

Q. The article has returned to the headlines due to his arrest. Could what they were trying to do have turned against them?

R. Since the article was published, no one had contacted me until last Sunday, April 7. What has happened since then has been that several international media, as well as platforms for human rights and the defense of press freedom, have brought it to light again. If their tactic was to cover the trail of the investigation, they have failed.

Q. In an official statement, Malawi Police Service Public Relations Officer Peter Kalaya said he was arrested after receiving a complaint from Batatawala that you had extorted money from him. What does it say about it?

R. I have not spoken to Mr. Batatawala since the interview I did with him for the article. These statements are totally false.

You can follow Future Planet in x, Facebook, instagram and TikTok and subscribe here to our newsletter.