Police in the capital, Harare, on August 18, 2014, assaulted and detained a photojournalist from the private daily paper Zimbabwe Mail who was covering a demonstration calling on the government to provide jobs, according to news reports.
Angela Jimu was beaten and assaulted by police while covering the protest, according to a statement from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) youth wing and a photographer who wrote an eye witness account of the attack. The police took her away in a police truck.
Jimu spent most of the day in police custody at Harare Central police station before being released without charge, Sinqobile Tesa, deputy editor at the Zimbabwe Mail, told CPJ.
Nigel Nyamutumbu, programs and information officer of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, told CPJ that he visited Harare Central Police Station in the middle of the afternoon and saw Jimu but was not allowed to speak to her. She was released later that day.
The protest took place at the same time that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe assumed the chairmanship of the Southern African Development Community at its 34th summit of heads of state and government that began on August 17, 2014.