Five foreign Lutheran church workers, including an American, have been put under house arrest and are expected to be charged for violating Zimbabwe's media laws and immigration regulations, diplomats said Monday.
The five a Chicago woman, a Finn, a Kenyan and two Germans spent most of Monday making formal statements at a police station in the mining village of Zvishavane, 250 miles south of Harare and were scheduled to be charged in court on Tuesday.
Embassy officials in Harare said they were told the five, members of the Lutheran World Federation charity, returned late Monday to their hotel where they had been under "house arrest" since Saturday.
The church workers arrived in Zimbabwe on Friday and had planned to write reports on church assistance to AIDS and hunger victims and development work in western Zimbabwe for the forthcoming Lutheran centenary "Healing the World" gathering.
Police accused them of being foreign journalists working in Zimbabwe without government approval.
Under Zimbabwe's strict media laws passed last year that is an offense punishable by two years in jail. However, "in-house publications," such as church magazines, are exempt.
Embassy officials said the group was told they would be charged under the media laws and immigration regulations that on arrival they failed to declare their intention to gather information for the media on conditions in Zimbabwe .
One of the five, Kathleen Kastilahn, 56, from Chicago, said Sunday the group showed routine business visas at immigration when they arrived in the country on Friday. But when they reached their hotel that evening, they were met by plainclothes police who told them they were harboring spies, searched them and confiscated their personal papers, laptop computers, cameras and film.
They were taken to the police station for several hours Friday night, then told to return to their hotel and not leave it, she 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.
Police have arrested 14 local independent journalists in the past year on charges of violating the media laws. Only one has been tried and was acquitted.
Foreign journalists have been barred entry without government accreditation. The accreditation must be sought at least three weeks in advance of arrival.