Photo journo harassed in Zimbabwe

HARARE – A photographer working for the independent Standard newspaper was threatened by police after he photographed the wounds of lawyers assaulted by police, his newspaper said on Sunday.

A marketing executive for the paper also was detained for publicly criticising the arrest of a street vendor by police who accused him of being a lawyer, the paper reported. Davison Maruziva, editor of the weekly Standard, called the harassment part of ‘the state’s terror crusade’.”First, it was leaders of the opposition and civic society; then their supporters and the lawyers who defended them,” he wrote in Sunday’s edition.”Now they are coming for the messengers who carry images of their excesses to the wider domestic and international public.”The Standard last Sunday published a dramatic front-page picture of welts and bruises inflicted in an assault on attorney Beatrice Mtetwa, head of the Zimbabwe Law Society, when police broke up a gathering of lawyers in Harare the previous week.The Standard said Boldwill Hungwe’s alleged crime was photographing “the results of the savage beating” of Mtetwa, who also is a prominent human rights lawyer.Hungwe was accused of unspecified offences under security laws carrying the penalty of imprisonment or a fine, but he was not charged with any offence.On Thursday, marketing executive Alexeos Maziyikana witnessed the handcuffing of a vendor accused of illegal street selling and expressed his concern over the man’s arrest, the paper said.Maziyikana was accused of interfering, arrested for being ‘a street lawyer’ and later released, it reported.The paper said deputy editor Bill Saidi recently received a bullet in the mail after publishing a cartoon showing baboons poking fun at an army officer’s pay slip.Maruziva called the incidents ‘pure harassment’ of Zimbabwe’s independent media.”The intention is to scare us away from covering their acts of naked brutality,” Maruziva wrote.Nampa-APDavison Maruziva, editor of the weekly Standard, called the harassment part of ‘the state’s terror crusade’.”First, it was leaders of the opposition and civic society; then their supporters and the lawyers who defended them,” he wrote in Sunday’s edition.”Now they are coming for the messengers who carry images of their excesses to the wider domestic and international public.”The Standard last Sunday published a dramatic front-page picture of welts and bruises inflicted in an assault on attorney Beatrice Mtetwa, head of the Zimbabwe Law Society, when police broke up a gathering of lawyers in Harare the previous week.The Standard said Boldwill Hungwe’s alleged crime was photographing “the results of the savage beating” of Mtetwa, who also is a prominent human rights lawyer.Hungwe was accused of unspecified offences under security laws carrying the penalty of imprisonment or a fine, but he was not charged with any offence.On Thursday, marketing executive Alexeos Maziyikana witnessed the handcuffing of a vendor accused of illegal street selling and expressed his concern over the man’s arrest, the paper said.Maziyikana was accused of interfering, arrested for being ‘a street lawyer’ and later released, it reported.The paper said deputy editor Bill Saidi recently received a bullet in the mail after publishing a cartoon showing baboons poking fun at an army officer’s pay slip.Maruziva called the incidents ‘pure harassment’ of Zimbabwe’s independent media.”The intention is to scare us away from covering their acts of naked brutality,” Maruziva wrote.Nampa-AP