Church workers and journalist detained in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwean authorities detained five foreign Lutheran church workers and a local journalist in a rural hotel today on suspicion that they violated the nation’s stringent security laws, the workers said.

Police denied the group, which included an American, a Finn, a Kenyan and two Germans, had been arrested and said they had agreed to remain voluntarily in the mining village of Zvishavane, 400 kilometres (250 miles) south of Harare.

“They are still suspects,” police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said. “We haven’t made a formal arrest. Some of the documents we found (on them) are in German, but the pictures are very apparent. We are still perusing them.”

Bvudzijena refused to say what laws the group may have violated, but the state-controlled Sunday Mail said they were “suspected of being journalists sent into the country to secretly write stories aimed at tarnishing the image of the government.”

Under new Zimbabwean legislation, it is an offence punishable by two years in jail to work as a journalist without state permission. However, “in-house publications,” such as church magazines, are exempt.

The workers for the World Evangelical Lutheran Federation denied they had volunteered to remain in their hotel.

Kathleen Kastilahn, 56, a US citizen from Chicago, said the group arrived in Harare early on Friday and showed their business visas at immigration. They planned to write reports on church assistance to Aids and hunger victims and development work for the forthcoming Lutheran centenary ”Healing the World” gathering.

When they arrived at their hotel in Zvishavane at 8pm, they were met by plainclothes police who told them they were harbouring spies, searched them and confiscated their personal papers, laptop computers, cameras and film.

“They were obviously waiting for us,” Kastilahn said.

The group was ordered to go to the police station and allowed to return to the hotel after midnight but was told not to leave it nor to call the nation’s embassies.

“We were quite shocked, Kastilahn said. She said police were angered by news reports she had with her.

The other detained workers were Rolf af Hallstrom, of Helsinki, Finland, Ute Heers and photographer Falk Orth, both from Germany, and Pauline Mumia, a Kenyan. Fanuel Jongwe, a reporter for local independent Daily News, was also detained.

A German embassy spokesman said Sunday the group’s driver, known only as Mr Hove, was beaten up. He said a protest was being considered.

The group had shown police an agenda for inspecting feeding stations and other humanitarian projects, Kastilahn said.

More than half Zimbabwe’s 12.5 million people are in danger of hunger in the coming months. Aid groups have blamed the crisis on erratic rains and the chaos caused by the government’s land reform program, which seized most of the nation’s white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to blacks.

James Morris, the visiting head of the World Food Program, angrily denied on Sunday claims by Zimbabwe’s state-controlled Herald newspaper that he “accepted the irreversibility of land reforms.”

Morris, who had urged that farmers be assisted to help relieve the crisis, described the report as “gross misrepresentation in its worst form.”