Harare, Zimbabwe
CNN
—
Award-winning Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga has been discovered responsible of staging a protest with the intent of inciting public violence, a courtroom within the capital Harare dominated Thursday.
Dangarembga, a fierce critic of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s authorities was arrested in 2020 for marching whereas holding a placard demanding reforms.
She was charged along with her good friend and colleague Julie Barnes who joined her on the protest.
The pair had been handed a suspended six-month jail time period and fined $70,000 Zim {Dollars} ($120).
Contained in the Harare courtroom, Dangarembga and Barnes held fingers as Justice of the Peace Barbara Mateko handed down her judgment.
“Contemplating the sequence of occasions, photos tendered in courtroom, proof by journalists …the 2 meant to incite violence and the accused are discovered responsible as charged.”
A defiant Dangarembga advised journalists after the decision, “This implies the area for freedom of expression is shrinking and is more and more criminalized. Nonetheless, we do intend to enchantment the conviction.”
Dangarembga, 63, has been a number one voice in condemning gross corruption and human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.
Her guide “This Mournable Physique” was nominated for a Booker Prize in 2020.
The ruling has drawn widespread condemnation, with the Booker Prize committee saying it was “shocked” to listen to in regards to the conviction,” in a Twitter post.
PEN Worldwide, an affiliation of writers, which awarded Dangarembga a Pinter Prize in 2021, additionally condemned the sentence in an announcement.
“The conviction at the moment of award-winning author, filmmaker, and activist Tsitsi Dangarembga and her co-accused, Julie Barnes, by a Zimbabwe Court docket is a travesty of justice. PEN Worldwide is shocked by this information and strongly condemns the systematic misuse of the rule of regulation by the Zimbabwean authorities to harass, intimidate, and punish Dangarembga and Barnes, just because they exercised their official proper to freedom of expression,” the assertion learn.
Journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, who has additionally been an outspoken critic of the ruling Zanu-PF occasion, mentioned the conviction “is without doubt one of the greatest blunders ever made by (President) Mnangagwa’s repressive regime, they may not care, however they may remorse it.”
The Zimbabwe Attorneys for Human Rights weighed in saying it was saddened by the conviction.
CNN has contacted the Zimbabwean authorities for a remark.
