POLICE arrested and charged a columnist for Zimbabwe’s only independent daily newspaper Monday, bringing to eight the number of journalists arrested under harsh new media laws critics say are aimed at stifling free speech in the country.
Pius Wakatama, who writes a weekly political column in The Daily News, was accused of publishing false information in a column published on Saturday, his lawyer Lawrence Chibwe said.
The column was critical of the tacit government support of land seizures by ruling party militants that had displaced black farm workers and forced white land owners to flee, including the family of a veteran white supporter of the country’s liberation movement from all-white rule.
A driver who works for the paper was also brought in for
questioning on Monday. Both Wakatama and the driver were released from custody.
Wakatama will be summoned to appear in court soon, his lawyer said. Two Daily News reporters and Andrew Meldrum, 50, a US citizen who is the Harare correspondent of the British newspaper The Guardian,, are scheduled to appear in court on similar charges on Tuesday.
All four face charges of ”abuse of journalistic privilege by publishing falsehoods,” a crime punishable by up to two years in jail under media laws in effect since March.
The laws were passed shortly before the re-election of longtime President Robert Mugabe. Human rights groups and opposition activists said the laws are intended to muzzle the media as part of wider effort to suppress dissent in Zimbabwe.
Chibwe said driver Shadrack Mukwecheni was being questioned because he drove one of the reporters who had helped investigate a report in the Daily News about the killing – allegedly by ruling party supporters – of a woman near the town of Karoi, 200 kilometres northwest of Harare.
Police said the killing never happened, and the Daily News retracted the story.
The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists has named Zimbabwe one of the 10 worst places to be a journalist, alongside Afghanistan, Colombia and Iran.
Four other journalists, including a correspondent of the British Daily Telegraph, have been arrested since the media laws went into effect. They have been released but may be summoned to court in the future. ? Sapa-AFP