OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Monday
BELLIGERENT Zimbabwean officials have refused to be served with a high court order delaying the government’s expulsion of two foreign journalists for five days – but Harare now faces a real threat of international sanctions from an outraged US and Britain.
The court warned police not to harass the two journalists, BBC correspondent Joseph Winter and Uruguayan Mercedes Sayagues, who writes for the Mail and Guardian, before their departure.
But Winter said the information minister, the chief immigration officer and the police had refused to sign the order.
Winter and Sayagues were both given 24 hours to leave Zimbabwe on Saturday after the government claimed their employment permits had expired.
Overnight, Winter fled with his family to the British High Commission here after an unknown gang tried to break into his flat. Police later forcefully entered the premises, neighbours said.
Both the British and US governments attacked Harare over the affair.
” A free press and independent judiciary are essential parts of any democratic society,” said British Foreign Office minister Brian Wilson. ”Expelling journalists cannot prevent the world from seeing what is happening in Zimbabwe or anywhere else.
A US foreign office representative warned Mugabe that the US was having talks with international organisations and other ”concerned countries” about ways in which the right of law and human rights could be protected in Zimbabwe.
The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) also criticised the expulsions, saying the treatment of the two reporters was ”unacceptable” and was another example of efforts by the government ”to destroy press freedom.”
The ZUJ secretary general, Basildon Peta, said the expulsions were ”part of a cocktail of measures that they (the authorities) have put together to destroy effective journalism in Zimbabwe.”
”Unfortunately it will reinforce the now widely-held view that Zimbabwe is run by tyrants and as a result we will have more enemies than friends,” said Peta.
The attack on Winter’s house and the explusion orders come amid an onslaught on the media and the opposition which, according to analysts, is linked to next year’s presidential elections and President Robert Mugabe’s fears that he may lose it. – AFP
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