(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, RSF expressed its concern over the assault on three journalists from the independent daily “The Daily News”. RSF asked the chief of police to do everything in his power to ensure that journalists can work safely throughout the country. “You have a responsibility to protect […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, RSF expressed its concern over the assault on three journalists from the independent daily “The Daily News”. RSF asked the chief of police to do everything in his power to ensure that journalists can work safely throughout the country. “You have a responsibility to protect journalists who practice their profession, regardless of their media outlet’s editorial policy,” said RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. He also noted that journalists from a pro-government newspaper who covered the same event were not attacked. “After having pushed foreign journalists to leave the country, the Zimbabwean authorities are now attacking the local press,” added Ménard.
RSF recalled that since the beginning of the year, seventeen local journalists have been detained and seven others have been assaulted by the police or war veterans.
According to information gathered by RSF, on 17 September 2001, Mduduzi Mathuthu and Collin Chiwanza, reporters from “The Daily News”, Urgina Mauluka, a photographer with the same daily, and their driver were attacked by Zimbabwean war veterans in Hwedza (60 km south-east of Harare). The journalists went to a farm following the death of two war veterans in clashes with a white farmer. Several war veterans accused the journalists of having been “sent by the English or by the Movement for Democratic Change [MDC, the main opposition party].” The journalists were kicked repeatedly. They said a Zimbabwean soldier who had been sent to protect the farm saved them by threatening the assailants with his gun. The journalists suffered from bruises all over their bodies following the beating. Their equipment and camera were confiscated by their attackers. Two journalists from the pro-government newspaper “The Herald” were also present at the farm but were not assaulted.
For several months now, veterans of Zimbabwe’s 1980 independence war have been attacking white farmers in the country. Their aim is to confiscate their farms in order to give them to landless black families. Long supported by the head of state, these seizures should end soon, as the Zimbabwean government has signed a land redistribution agreement with white farmers and the British government.
