London | Tuesday
A ZIMBABWEAN independent journalist who writes for Britain’s Independent daily has been freed after being held overnight under the country’s new security laws, his lawyer said on Tuesday.
Basildon Peta, who is also secretary general of the Zimbabwean Union of Journalists (ZUJ), was freed on Tuesday without going to court after charges against him were dropped.
Peta was charged with failing to notify the authorities about a demonstration last Wednesday by independent and foreign journalists against new media legislation, which is yet to be signed into law by President Robert Mugabe.
The restrictive press laws were pushed through Zimbabwe’s parliament on January 31, ahead of elections set for March 9-10, when President Robert Mugabe faces his strongest challenge since taking power in the former British colony in 1980.
If he had been convcted, Peta could have spent two years in jail under the charges, the Independent said.
The new Public Order and Security Act makes it a crime to criticise or ridicule President Mugabe, and also prescribes a death sentence or life imprisonment for anyone convicted of “insurgency, banditry, sabotage or terrorism”.
The Act, together with a government crackdown on the opposition, has attracted international condemnation, particularly from Britain, which has also been pressing hard for sanctions against Mugabe’s regime.
“This is the first high-profile arrest under the new Public Security Act,” Lovemore Maduko, a leader of the country’s National Constitutional Assembly, told the Independent,.
“We are worried about Basildon’s safety. It is very possible that he will be beaten up, and that it will later be claimed that he was attacked by prisoners or some other such nonsense.”
Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party said on Monday that three of its supporters were killed last week by militias backing Mugabe, while four others were missing in the increasingly tense run-up to the elections.
Peta has been regularly harassed by the police and threatened with jail because of his work, the Independent said, adding that last year his name appeared at the top of a security service “hitlist” of opposition figures.
Before his arrest on Monday, Peta was told by police officers that they were acting on orders from the highest levels of the Mugabe regime, the British daily said.
His detention by the authorities came as the European Commission said on Monday there was no need to take a decision on sanctions against Zimbabwe, because there had been no attempt to prevent the deployment of a team of EU election observers.
European Union foreign ministers had formally warned Zimbabwe a week ago that their 15 nations would impose “targeted sanctions” on Mugabe’s regime unless it allowed EU observers into the country.
Responding to Peta’s arrest, Glenys Kinnock, a member of the European Parliament for Britain’s ruling Labour Party, said: “I urge the authorities to release him and allow him and his colleagues to report freely.
“There is no point in pursuing the idea of an open election if the opposition cannot hold rallies or if journalists are being taken into detention.”
The Movement for Democratic Change is expected to mount the strongest electoral challenge yet to Mugabe, who has ruled for 22 years, and to his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) party.
As well as a government crackdown on the media, the country has seen rising political violence against the opposition, threatened military intervention in the presidential election, food shortages and a shrinking economy. – AFP