{"id":257730,"date":"2023-04-18T20:13:31","date_gmt":"2023-04-18T18:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/twitter-threats-to-litigants-in-zimbabwean-exemption-permit-court-case\/"},"modified":"2023-04-18T20:13:31","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T18:13:31","slug":"twitter-threats-to-litigants-in-zimbabwean-exemption-permit-court-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/twitter-threats-to-litigants-in-zimbabwean-exemption-permit-court-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter threats to litigants in Zimbabwean Exemption Permit court case"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Tariro%20Washinyira\/zep2.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/twitter-threats-to-litigants-in-zimbabwean-exemption-permit-court-case.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Litigants in the court case to stop the scrapping of the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP) have received threats on Twitter. Archive photo: Tariro Washinyira<\/p>\n<p>The director of the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF), Nicole Fritz, and her family received threats on Twitter the day before the foundation\u2019s court action to stop the scrapping of the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP).<\/p>\n<p>On 10 April, Twitter user Freeman Bhengu (@zibuseman) wrote, \u201cWe are watching her and we know where she stays, her daughter and their closed offices in Parktown, we will deal with her tomorrow @Nicole Fritz\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The HSF, along with the Zimbabwe Immigration Federation and the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit Holders, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/judgment-reserved-in-case-to-decide-future-zimbabweans-in-south-africa\/\">are challenging<\/a> in court the decision by the Department of Home Affairs to scrap the ZEP, which would affect more than 170,000 permit holders. The hearing started in the Pretoria High Court on 11 April.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/twitter-threats-to-litigants-in-zimbabwean-exemption-permit-court-case.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>Fritz says that these threats are \u201cenormously disturbing\u201d and that those working in social justice or human rights should not experience such harassment. She says other litigants are also receiving threats.<\/p>\n<p>Global South Against Xenophobia (GSAX) has called on the South African Police Service (SAPS) and South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to act. In a statement, the GSAX called for SAPS to protect Fritz during the duration of the court hearings or until the perpetrators are arrested and to investigate all the threats.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe urge all our people to stand up against xenophobia and perpetrators of other corruptions and to defend the space for activists and civil society actors,\u201d said GSAX.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t the first time Fritz has been threatened. She says the same person has emailed her in the past telling her that she is being watched.<\/p>\n<p>Fritz says Twitter has suspended him in the past. But this time, under new ownership, they didn\u2019t, as according to Twitter, this doesn\u2019t violate their rules.<\/p>\n<p>She says that she understands that people might disagree with the court action, but \u201cthe idea that going to court could earn you death threats is gravely concerning\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Fritz says that she\u2019s grateful for the support she has received but would not want the threats to detract from a focus on the ZEP issue.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2023 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.zahttps:\/\/groundup.org.za\/media\/_versions\/images\/photographers\/Tariro%20Washinyira\/zep2_extra_large.jpeg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Litigants in the court case to stop the scrapping of the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP) have received threats on Twitter. Archive photo: Tariro Washinyira The director of the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF), Nicole Fritz, and her family received threats on Twitter the day before the foundation\u2019s court action to stop the scrapping of the Zimbabwean [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":257731,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-257730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/twitter-threats-to-litigants-in-zimbabwean-exemption-permit-court-case.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}