Real radio wars

[Zoidberg]

These reports make the past decade of U.S. shortwave "pirate wars" seem petty and insignificant, driven by egos rather than genuine issues related to free speech and liberty.

My sincere thanks to "bun" on IRC #pirateradio, which routinely proves itself to be a haven for genuine camaraderie and regard for free radio, despite the efforts of some to paint a warped and distorted picture of the channel.
FM 93 Dilbar Radio in Charsadda, Pakistan bombed
   Suspected militants blew up parts of the privately-owned radio station FM 93 Dilbar Radio at about 1:30 a.m. on April 20, 2011 after planting explosives around the building housing the station. Radio Dilbar is located in the town of Charsadda, 120 kilometres southeast of Peshawar in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, and broadcasts a mix of news and music.

According to press reports, unknown persons planted powerful explosive material around the station; two rooms and the boundary wall of the radio station were completely destroyed and some equipment was also damaged in the blast. Two technical staff members and two security guards were present at the time of the blast but no injuries or loss of life were reported.

Shahryar Shah, station manager of Radio Dilbar, told Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) that the radio station had temporarily stopped transmission for 18 hours, but had resumed transmission later that evening. Shah said they had not received any threats, but suggested that the attackers were the same militants who had earlier targeted District Coordination Offices (DCO) and schools in Charsadda.

Police officer Shafiullah Khan said no one had claimed responsibility for the attack. Members of the Gandhara Union of Journalists condemned the blast at the radio station, calling it an attack on the media. They also criticized local police for failing to prevent it and for not providing protection to media institutions.
   
Source: Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)
Date:4/22/2011
Unidentified arsonists set fire to the home of Teresa Reyes and Radio Faluma
Bimetu director Alfredo López at midnight on 7 April, 2011
Also: http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/

Unidentified arsonists set fire to the home of Teresa Reyes and Radio Faluma Bimetu director Alfredo López at midnight on 7 April, in the latest in a long list of attacks on the personnel and installations of this community radio station (known in Spanish as Radio Coco Dulce), based in Triunfo de la Cruz, in the Atlantic coast municipality of Tela.

The mouthpiece of the country’s Garifuna (Afro-Honduran) community, Radio Coco Dulce has been attacked repeatedly since the June 2009 coup d’état. The attacks have intensified since the start of 2010, when its premises were ransacked and torched, but they have never been properly investigated and remain unpunished.

Reporters Without Borders and the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC-ALC) reiterate their appeal to the Honduran authorities to lose no time in investigating the recent attacks on the station’s members. The international community must urge the Honduran government to protect all of this community radio station’s rights, including the right to free expression.

Harassment of Radio Coco Dulce resumed again during last January’s local elections, when several of its members were threatened or were the target of unjustified criminal proceedings, although the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has asked Honduras to take precautionary measures to protect its members.

Radio Coco Dulce has always defended the rights of Triunfo’s Garifuna community, including the right to keep its coastal land, which has been threatened by expropriation for major tourism development projects by a group of local politicians and entrepreneurs.

The frequent attacks on Radio Coco Dulce members and the failure to punish the threats and acts of violence against it constitute a serious violation of the Triunfo community’s right to free expression and reflect a desire of the part of the local authorities to silence the station.

Sad anniversary for La Voz de Zacate Grande

It is in this climate of heightened tension that La Voz de Zacate Grande, a community radio station on the Pacific Coast island of Zacate Grande, will be marking the first anniversary of its creation tomorrow.

A week ago, the prosecutor’s office in the nearby town of Amapala ordered the capture of eight leaders of the local peasant organization ADEPZA, of which La Voz de Zacate Grande is the mouthpiece. Several of those named in the arrest order are contributors to the radio station and the charges, which are several months old, directly concern its activities.

The authorities appear to be reluctant carry out the arrests on Zacate Grande island for fear that the local population will demonstrate in support of the station’s contributors, who are however liable to be arrested whenever they leave the island, above all when they report to the court in Amapala, which they are supposed to do every two weeks.

A meeting of community radio stations is to be held today to mark the anniversary.

Reporters Without Borders and the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters - Latin America and the Caribbean (AMARC-ALC) call on the Honduran authorities to stop the harassment of community radio stations and to respect their right to free speech. They also urge the authorities to take whatever security measures are necessary to ensure that there are no problems at tomorrow’s AMARC meeting in Honduras.
 
http://en.rsf.org/honduras-community-radio-stations-still-13-04-2011,40023.html
Published on Wednesday 13 April 2011.

[paranoid dxer]

Zimbabwe Pirate via Achim
What began as idle village talk over tea and tobacco quickly became reality when the son of my late uncle smuggled in a cheap Chinese radio transmitter from South Korea. For a week what was probably the first independent village radio in Zimbabwe rocked our little, insignificant village.

In our village in Chimanimani, in eastern Zimbabwe, we have never enjoyed the luxury of listening to state radio and television broadcast services from Harare, which is hundreds of kilometres away. This painful predicament has persisted since 1980, when the country became independent. Numerous queries to the radio authorities offered many reasons, but no solutions.

"Your village is mountainous, this hinders radio transmission signals," a cheeky-mouthed government administrator found joy in saying.

"There is too much mist and rain, this clouds short-wave signals," said one self-appointed "communication expert", glorifying the government's decision to cut off our village from the rest of the country for 30 years.

"You're too far from Harare to matter and you belong to Zimbabwe's vanishing Ndau tribe," said one honest bureaucrat, at last decoding the lies of 30 years.

As able and busy-bodied village think-tanks, we reasoned that resistance was futile. Through our own ant-like efforts and innovations we were going to establish our own village radio station. Government approval mattered little. After all, to the fat cats in Harare we didn't even register on the map. We resolved to forge ahead in the face of stifling bureaucracy and Zimbabwe's Tehran-like media regulations.

That is more or less how our pirate station, Pachindau People's Radio, came to a brief life.

We attempted to pull together our meagre resources. A proper radio transmitter to broadcast shortwave and FM would cost us about $12 000. That is an astronomical figure for information-starved villagers used to tuning in to the BBC and Radio Netherlands Worldwide out of desperation.

Our bold-eyed village elder, a survivor of Zimbabwe's 1970s bitter bush war, recommended that we all commit to selling our cattle, donkeys, goats and hens to pool resources for the transmitter


Still, $12 000 was a steep pipe dream. Worse still, Pachindau People's Radio would fall early victim to government's viciousness if word got around too fast. We decided to move at lightning speed.

My 30-year-old cousin, who was studying electronic and satellite engineering on a scholarship in South Korea, quickly morphed into the eastern radio Messiah. There were countless types of short-wave radio transmission machines available in South Korea's bazaars, he helpfully advised. At give away prices, he added. Or even next to nothing, he said.

Taking advantage of the fact that South Korea is one of the most wired countries on Earth, my uncle's son convinced his college lecturers and fellow students in Seoul that a village somewhere far off in Africa desperately needed a radio transmitter machine.

Accordingly, his classmates and lecturers pulled together some cash and bought him a cheap, second-hand Chinese radio transmitter, which cost a measly $2 500.

When my cousin sneaked the transmitter into Zimbabwe from South Korea, via South Africa, he encountered no problem with starry-eyed immigration officials. None of them had the technical knowledge to understand he was carrying a radio transmitter for an angry far-off village.It was a bio-diesel fuel generator, he said.

When he arrived in the village, ululations and delight were drowned out by bickering. Every sole and soul -- from the village herd boy to the overworked grinding mill man -- wanted to be a presenter on Pachindau Radio.

After sanity was restored it was agreed that the Pachindau People's Radio transmitter would be housed on top of the local mountain to give the radio frequencies a longer range in the rough village terrain. The only troubling issue was that Dima mountain is sacred. Its tree-lined surface sometimes burns on its own. Rain-making rituals are frequently carried out in the mountain, with impressive and instant results.

Broadcasts would disturb the spirits of the dead, argued a one-eyed village sorcerer desperate for a consultation fee.

This was brushed aside and Pachindau People's Radio, with a measly frequency range of 7km, went on air from 6pm to midnight, powered by a diesel generator for seven solid days. Funerals, village weddings, hoe-sharpening ceremonies, folklore beats and, yes, Boni Jovi, as well as cattle-slaughtering notices, were relayed from the mountain broadcast. It brought relief, joy, craziness and fear.

Then disaster struck. Tipped off by the patriotic and ex-combatant supporters of the government in Harare, fiercely breathing blokes claiming to come from the information ministry in the capital turned up at the mountain base in the middle of the night.

The transmission equipment and diesel generator were seized and the village went quiet again, like a serene Jewish cemetery in leafy New York.

Pachindau People's Radio was dangerously illegal, argued the night raiders. Its mere 7km transmission was cutting into the state radio signals, they explained (even though no state radio signals have ever reached our village).

One of the hard-to-believe rumours is that Pachindau People's Radio equipment is sitting idly in a government office in Harare, perhaps to strengthen the disintegrating facilities of Zimbabwe's state radio.

But the most believable rumour says it all: the night raiders were common thieves posing as government operatives to lay their hands on potentially lucrative transmission equipment.

So that's the story of how Pachindau Radio lived briefly and died suddenly. Or maybe still lives, tucked away somewhere in a thief's garage being polished for the scrap market.


a posting from the Pirate Crap Heap on Alfa Lima

[John Poet]

"Broadcasts would disturb the spirits of the dead, argued a one-eyed village sorcerer desperate for a consultation fee."


I get that complaint a lot...