Prominent Journalist Hopewell Chin’ono says its sad that Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government is persecuting him for exposing the looting of public funds.
In an interview on SABC, Chin’ono said instead of the people that were involved in this looting and the planning to be arrested and convicted and thrown into prison, it was him who was arrested and thrown into prison.
“I’ve spent 81 days In total, and I was arrested three times in six months for simply doing my work as a journalist, for simply exposing corruption, which has caused so much pain to Zimbabweans”.
He added that the health delivery system is collapsing, “2500 women die every year trying to give birth, and we only have two maternity theatres in the biggest hospital in Zimbabwe, and only one of them is working, they were built in 1977 by Ian Smith during the colonial rule”.
Hopewell said he instructed his lawyers to sue the state for wrongful arrest, detention and malicious prosecution.
He added that he was being persecuted for a crime he did not commit.
“The Zimbabwean police went to court, said that I had tweeted that one of their officers had beaten a child to death and the child was at the mother’s back, I never tweeted that.
“The magistrate embarrassingly said that there was overwhelming evidence that I had done this, there was no evidence at all. In fact, the police officer would give evidence in court, saying that he had no immediate evidence, it would only bring it in 72 hours.
“Its a struggle against a repressive regime that uses the law to target critics, and to target journalists who are exposing the corruption, which is the central issue that is destroying the economy”.
