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Reporting in the line of fire: Narratives by Zimbabwean journalists-2007
MISA-Zimbabwe
February 29, 2008

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Horror at the hands of Mugabe's police
By Frank Chikowore

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." These words were penned in a prison cell in 1963 by one of America's best known advocates of equal rights Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. These powerful words remind me of the must-forget events of May 18, 2005- exactly 15 days after Zimbabwe joined the rest of the world to commemorate the United Nations World Press Freedom Day, and less than two months after the nation celebrated 25 years of "independence and democracy," when President Robert Mugabe's administration saw it fit to victimize me for an unjust reason.

My offence according to the arresting police details who viciously assaulted me with the butts of their guns, clenched fists and booted feet was filming them as they raided flea market stalls as the Harare administration launched a crackdown on what it called "illegal foreign currency dealings and structures" which degenerated into what became later known as Operation Restore Order (Murambatsvina). I had never imagined a gun being pointed at my head and a state security agent calling me a "sellout"! This was the first time I asked God to have mercy on me for my world was crumbling before me. The government blitz, according to the UN Director of Habitat, Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, left more than 700 000 Zimbabwean without shelter and source of income. It is this human catastrophe that the state did not want me to expose that resulted in the assaults by the police and my subsequent detention at Harare Central Police Station.

While in custody I thought I would now be safe from the assaults only to realize that that marked the beginning of the horror show. My thoughts shifted to the possibility of death at the hands of the police who by nature are supposed to be the custodians of human rights. The police were moving me from one cell to the other so that lawyers Jessie Majome and the late human rights lawyer Lawrence Chibwe acting under the instructions of Wilbert Mandinde who is the Legal Officer with MISA-Zimbabwe- would not be able to locate me. It took them more than three hours to finally locate me. They were not furnished with any charges as police details manning the station were saying the arresting and investigating officers were not present. I had no choice but spend the night in a tiny, filthy and overcrowded cell where I could hardly lift my leg and without any access to food or water.

It was after the intervention of Majome and Chibwe on the following day that I was released without charges. Their decision not to prefer any charges was premised on the fact that I had not committed any offence as I was in possession of my press accreditation card as required under the repressive Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA). It was surprising that the police had to arrest me first in order to investigate of the opposite. Regrettably, my arrest came after the closure of the largest circulating daily newspaper, The Daily News. It seemed that the government was determined to silence all dissenting voices in the wake of the closure of the Daily News. But let me go back to illegal raids. They were made at around 1700 hours when the vendors were winding off their day's business. Many of the raided vendors I spent the night with at the police station were complaining that the police had confiscated their money, wares and other personal belongings. I smelt a rat. When I was released, I had the chance of speaking to some of my former inmates and they told me they could not recover most of their items from the police. I wonder if they ever got them from the officers who conducted the raid the Juliet Troop of Chikurubi Support Unit.

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