A Namibian human rights group on Wednesday accused bodyguards and local police of resorting to "heavy-handed tactics" to keep the paparazzi away from movie stars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Jolie, who is eight months pregnant and is expected to give birth in Namibia, arrived with Pitt in the southern African country in early April. She has been welcomed by the government which has asked the press to respect the couple's privacy during their stay near the west coast town of Swakopmund.
But the National Society of Human Rights (NSHR) said in a statement that "both the three-member private security personnel of Jolie and Pitt and Namibia police members have conducted unwarranted door-to-door searches of the homes of local residents for paparazzi and other media workers." "We condemn the heavy-handed and brutal tactics selectively directed against local and certain foreign journalists," the NSHR said in a statement, issued in Windhoek.
Local newspaper journalist Donna Collins told AFP that she saw police carry out the searches of homes late last week near the Langstrand beach resort on Namibia's west coast where the Hollywood couple are staying. The "house-to-house searches and hunting down journalists as if they are criminals is unacceptable," Collins said. She said that she had been "chased away" by security guards and nearly had her camera ripped from her neck when she was on a nearby beach.
Namibian police denied that local residents and the press had been harassed.
"No cameras were seized and no reporters have been brutalised," police spokesman Hieronymus Goraseb told AFP. | And who'd argue with anyone named Hieronymus? |
The Namibian government Monday vowed to protect Jolie and Pitt's privacy after the glamorous couple released a statement asking the press to leave them alone. Namibia over the weekend ordered three French paparazzi and a South African photographer to leave the country for trying to snap Jolie. | Why dodge paparazzi in L.A. or Europe when you can rent a country's police force to keep them away? |
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