Media violations

Five journalists were caught up in demonstrations that rocked Harare and Bulawayo on Monday 14 January 2019.

Police this afternoon assaulted journalist Costa Nkomo while they were rounding up vendors in the Harare City Centre. Nkomo is a journalist with online publication 263Chat.

Today, 11 December, the Zimbabwe Republic Police officers assaulted and briefly detained Hubert Sithole and Panashe Makuta. Sithole and Makuta are reporter and photojournalists with online publication Mail and Telegraph respectively.

A freelance journalist, Nyasha Mukapiko with online publication Open Parly Zimbabwe, was assaulted and harassed on the afternoon of 22 November 2018.

On the afternoon of 29 October, Zimbabwe Republic Police officers beat up and detained freelance journalist Philemon Jambaya. The wrongful arrest took place as part of a joint ZRP and Harare municipality police operation in Harare’s Copacabana area that saw the arrest of vendors working in the area.

A video clip showing state security agents harassing local journalist Violet Gonda at State House in Harare on 29 October 2018 has gone viral on social media.

A plainclothes police officer assaulted Panashe Makufa a local journalist with online publication Mail & Telegraph on 18 October 2018 in Harare after asking why he was filming a police blitz against illegal foreign currency dealers.

Police in Masvingo on 17 October 2018 threatened Godfrey Mutimba a journalist who writes for The Worker, a print publication run by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions

Private media journalists were today, 16 October barred from entering the Commission of Inquiry into the post-elections violence that took place on August 1, 2018 in Harare, which is scheduled to conduct public hearings at the Cresta Hotel, Msasa, Harare.

Vendors selling the NewsDay and Zimbabwe Independent published by Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) were on 11 October 2018 attacked by some youths who went on to burn the newspapers in Harare’s central business district.