Journalist David Hundeyin said he was detained in a tiny, smelly room for 10 hours before being deported from Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwe government spokesperson added Hundeyin's papers were not in order.
Hundeyin said his treatment presented a bad picture about a country that wanted to attract tourists and investors.
Nigerian journalist David Hundeyin has always wanted to visit Zimbabwe, but when it eventually materialised early this week, he spent 10 hours in a filthy, tiny, dark room and was later deported.
Hundeyin, an investigative journalist, is one of the 2023 James Currey Fellows at the University of Cambridge.
His visit to Zimbabwe was linked to the fellowship, as he was due to have a speaking engagement after being invited by a Zimbabwean who is a member of the James Currey Foundation.
"I have wanted to visit since I was at university over 12 years ago," he told News24 without disclosing his location, only saying he was "far away from Zimbabwe".
Before making the trip down south from Ghana, where he is based, Hundeyin said he checked with the Zimbabwean embassy about travel requirements.
"I confirmed from the Zimbabwean embassy that I wouldn't need a visa on account of my Ghanaian passport.
"They said as long as the airline was happy to recognise my Ghanaian refugee passport, they had no problem with recognising it as a Ghanaian passport. It was up to the airline," he added.
Hundeyin made the trip to Harare aboard Ethiopian Airlines with no hassles but would later encounter challenges upon arriving at Robert Mugabe International Airport.
"I got to Harare and the next thing I knew, I was being denied entry and processed for removal for not having a visa.
"They claimed Zimbabwe does not recognise refugee passports as passports, and so the visa free status of Ghanaian passport holders in Zimbabwe did not apply to me," he said.
For that, he was considered to be a Nigerian who came to Zimbabwe without a visa. That is when the nightmare started.
Hundeyin said:
They locked me in a tiny room without windows that smelled of pee, with a door that locked from the outside for over 10 hours without any communication or indication about what was happening.
Luckily they did not confiscate his phone and he started tweeting to raise the alarm.
A fellow journalist and a YouTuber brought the matter to the attention of authorities in Zimbabwe.
"It was when my friends, Wode Maya and Hopewell Chin'ono, started making calls that things started moving.
"Prior to that, it seemed they had quite literally forgotten about me in there. The people who locked me in had ended their shifts and gone home," Hundeyin said.
His situation played out on social media with government spokesperson Nick Mangwana frantically explaining the government's position on the immigration issue involving Hundeyin.
Mangwana, in a series of tweets, said: "David came with Ghanaian refugee papers claiming he was a Nigerian who was a refugee from his home country. His country of asylum is Ghana after claiming to be running away from persecution in Nigeria.
Some of the messages scrawled on the walls of the detention room. Many of them were written by Ghanaians.Ghana and Zimbabwe supposedly share a visa-free relationship, I know for a fact that Ghana does not do this to Zimbabweans or anyone else, so why is Ghana treated like this? https://t.co/yKiTaskHhy pic.twitter.com/EKho6c8NDV
-- David Hundeyin (@DavidHundeyin) July 20, 2023.
"He said he was just coming to visit but without getting a visa in Ghana first. Other parts of his story were also unsatisfactory to the immigration authorities.
"He was considered not a candidate for entry into Zimbabwe."
Hundeyin said the response from Zimbabwe's government ranged from disappointing to suspicious.
"Mangwana dishonestly inferred that I came into Zimbabwe illegally for some sort of ulterior purpose, meanwhile I used a valid passport which I have never had trouble using anywhere else, including the UK and EU, and I explained my purpose of visit several times at the immigration desk.
"The whole thing left a terrible impression on me, and this surely cannot be how to market a country that claims to want tourists and investors to the world," he added.
(New Zimbabwe.)
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