Zimbabwe deports Telegraph reporter

Zimbabwe deports Telegraph reporter

INFORMATION minister Jonathan Moyo is leading a purge on foreign correspondents

• Muleya scoops Commons award

• Mugabe thugs threaten to shoot Independent journalists

• Reporter Muleya attacked

• Mugabe undermining judiciary

• Mugabe in bid to close Econet

By Agencies

A REPORTER working for the Daily Telegraph is being thrown out of Zimbabwe a day after arriving to cover the Sri Lanka cricket series, a spokesman for the paper says.

"It is Mihir Bose who is a specialist writer on sports. He has been deported. He is packing now and will be catching an afternoon flight to Johannesburg," the spokesman said on Tuesday.

Bose's passport was confiscated by three immigration officials at his Bulawayo hotel on Monday night.

After an interview at the immigration department in Bulawayo on Tuesday morning, Bose was told to leave and he caught a plane to Johannesburg, South Africa.

His application for accreditation to cover the Sri Lanka cricket tour to Zimbabwe, which started on Tuesday with a one-day international match, arrived too late at the offices of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union.

An official at Queens Sports Club ground said that the information sent by Bose was also incomplete and accreditation was refused.

This meant he was not able to stay in the country.

The British Embassy in Harare was informed of developments in Bulawayo.

Zimbabwe has a history of fraught relations with Britain, its former colonial master, and has imposed rigid curbs on the activities of foreign reporters in the country.

Information Minister Jonathan Moyo has been leading a purge on foreign correspondents. The last to be thrown out was Guardian journalist Andrew Meldrum while the BBC has been labelled a 'terrorist' organisation and banned from Zimbabwean soil.

The chairman of the Zimbabwean Cricket Union is in London to try to persuade the English Cricket Board to go ahead with a tour to the former Rhodesia later this year, thrown into doubt by fears over security for the players - Reuters
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com