Political violence continues

Despite President Robert Mugabe's election victory, political violence continues in Zimbabwe with four deaths recorded in April, according to local human rights groups.

The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (Human Rights Forum) has claimed in its latest report that there appears to be no end to politically motivated violence and harassment.

The Human Rights Forum report comes after the African Commission on Human and People's Rights had requested to visit Zimbabwe on a fact-finding mission. The government had "welcomed the request", the state-controlled newspaper The Herald reported.

The report claimed that from 1 January to 30 April this year there have been 55 deaths as a result of politically motivated violence.

The organisation said: "With no impending elections, no tangible explanation seems clear for the politically motivated violence that is still persisting in Zimbabwe. The post election period has witnessed a sustained attack on known or suspected supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) by agents and supporters of the ruling party ZANU-PF."

The Human Rights Forum also claimed there had been 961 incidents of torture since 1 January.

Although most of the incidents of violence were allegedly perpetrated by ZANU-PF supporters and agents of the state, there was at least one incident recorded in the report in which MDC supporters were the aggressors. On 24 April they allegedly attacked the home of a Central Intelligence Organisation operative accused of involvement in a murder.

Press freedom, meanwhile, has once more come under scrutiny with the arrest of another journalist working for the independent newspaper The Daily News.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) said columnist Pius Wakatama was arrested for an article he wrote that was published last month.

The MISA statement, released on Wednesday, said Wakatama was charged with contravening sections of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act which makes it an offence for a journalist to publish falsehoods.

Journalists working for foreign media in Zimbabwe have, meanwhile, gone to the country's highest court to challenge sections of the law they contest is unconstitutional, Reuters reported. The Foreign Correspondents Association submitted papers to the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

"Under the Act journalists are liable to pay a fine of ZW $100,000 (about US $1,818) or two years in jail or both, for the offence," MISA said. Eight journalists have so far been charged under the law.

Wakatama wrote a column about the alleged decapitation of a woman by ruling party supporters, which he said had left him "numb with shock".

Last week three Zimbabwean journalists were arrested following an article in The Daily News on 23 April, which falsely alleged that two young girls had witnessed the beheading of their mother by ZANU-PF supporters in the rural area of Magunje, MISA said.

The Daily News apologised to the ruling party and to the government in a front page article on 27 April after it was revealed that the husband of the alleged victim had misled the paper.

"Zimbabwe's Minister of Information and Publicity in the President's Office, Professor Jonathan Moyo, has since warned government parastatals against advertising in The Daily News, which he alleges has created a reputation of peddling lies," the organisation said.

Wakatama was released after being fingerprinted and recording a warned and cautioned statement on Monday.