Government intensifies campaign to intimidate perceived enemies

By Tererai Karimakwenda
30 January 2006

The government is intensifying its campaign against perceived enemies. It’s adopted a strategy of threatening defenders of truth and justice in Zimbabwe using illegal tactics. Already this is showing results in some sectors as an environment of fear and paranoia now prevails. The hardest hit so far appears to be the media. Our correspondent Mike Mutasa in Mashonaland West said it has become almost impossible for journalists to follow stories because any questions considered critical of government are being interpreted as a sign of betrayal. He said they try to get information from contacts inside government circles but those connections are very shaky since you never know whom to trust.
Last week The International Bar Association criticised the police for attacking media freedom and for employing hostage tactics to secure the arrest of government critics. This was after the police arrested workers at lawyer Arnold Tsunga’s home in order to force him to report to them. In the same week the state security minister Didymus Mutasa threatened journalists in the country saying “the net is closing in on them”.

The legal profession also came under siege last Friday when Mugabe's long-serving spokesman, George Charamba, attacked prominent human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa. In a press statement in the state-controlled papers, Charamba accused the legal fraternity of hatching a plot to overwhelm the government through a series of challenges to AIPPA, the tough media law that has been used to shut down independent papers and to prosecute journalists. The Law Society of Zimbabwe immediately accused government of attempting to intimidate lawyers and undermine the rule of law. Charamba suggested that the legal challenges were mostly sponsored by the West, which he said “decorates Mtetwa.”

Nokutula Moyo, chairperson of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, believes that the threats will not affect them because the legal profession in Zimbabwe is a self-regulating statutory body. It has counsellors that the government would have to get to in order to affect its members. Moyo also said lawyers by training and by the nature of their work as fighters for justice are less likely to fold. Moyo does admit that fear of arrest and imprisonment exists in everyone. But she believes unlike the ordinary person, lawyers are already exposed to and are more aware of this threatening climate.