A Namibian human rights group on Wednesday accused bodyguards and local police of resorting to ”heavy-handed tactics” to keep the paparazzi away from movie stars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.
Jolie, who is eight months pregnant and expected to give birth in Namibia, arrived with Pitt in the Southern African country in early April. She has been welcomed by the government, which has asked the press to respect the couple’s privacy during their stay near the west-coast town of Swakopmund.
But the National Society of Human Rights (NSHR) said in a statement that ”both the three-member private security personnel of Jolie and Pitt and Namibia police members have conducted unwarranted door-to-door searches of the homes of local residents for paparazzi and other media workers”.
”We condemn the heavy-handed and brutal tactics selectively directed against local and certain foreign journalists,” the NSHR said in a statement, issued in Windhoek.
Local newspaper journalist Donna Collins said she saw police carry out the searches of homes late last week near the Langstrand beach resort on Namibia’s west coast where the Hollywood couple are staying.
The ”house-to-house searches and hunting down journalists as if they are criminals is unacceptable”, Collins said.
She said she had been ”chased away” by security guards and nearly had her camera ripped from her neck when she was on a nearby beach.
Namibian police denied that local residents and the press had been harassed.
”No cameras were seized and no reporters have been brutalised,” police spokesperson Hieronymus Goraseb said.
The Namibian government on Monday vowed to protect Jolie and Pitt’s privacy after the glamorous couple released a statement asking the press to leave them alone.
Namibia over the weekend ordered three French paparazzi and a South African photographer to leave the country for trying to snap Jolie.
A local tour operator said Jolie was this week taken to the nearby sand dunes of the Namib desert where a United Nations crew filmed a documentary on her and her work as a goodwill ambassador for the UN Children’s Fund.
Speaking in a telephone news conference to promote the Global Campaign for Education, of which she is the honorary chairperson, Jolie said she prefers not to talk about her child at the moment.
She spoke about travelling to various parts of the world, including Namibia. ”I feel very lucky to be able to come to these countries and I have learnt a lot,” she said.
”I want my children to learn the same and to grow up in the world as it really is, not just in a small corner that does not represent the entire globe. That’s why we travel so much,” said Jolie.
Jolie said she understands that she is a ”public person” and does what she can to promote causes as a celebrity.
”I hope it never impacts in a negative way and if I thought it might, I would remove myself from that situation, because I would never want to do that,” she said. — Sapa-AFP