[Marxism] Mugabe goon squads on the rampage

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, April 5, 2007
In Zimbabwe, Mugabe Critics Face Beatings
By MICHAEL WINES

HARARE, April 5 ? Keith Charumbira had just 
stepped off a minivan taxi in southwest Harare 
three weeks ago, fresh from a Friday evening 
gathering of civic advocates in Zimbabwe?s 
capital city, when he saw the knot of policemen 
walking toward him. It was too late to flee.

?They started asking questions,? he said. ? ?Why 
are you active in an opposition party that is 
against the needs of the government? Don?t you 
know you are part of a leadership that is leading 
to violence?? ? The officers rifled his pockets, 
he said, and took his cash, amounting to about 
$60. Then, for the next 20 minutes, they beat him.

?They used batons,? he said. ?My head, my chest, 
on my legs. I had a head injury.? When the 
officers tried to tie him up with his own shirt, 
Mr. Charumbira said, he managed to slip out and 
run away, fleeing first to a relative?s home, 
then to a Harare hospital. He spent six days there recovering.

There is nothing subtle about the reaction of 
President Robert G. Mugabe?s government to the 
latest surge of political unrest in Zimbabwe. By 
the scores ? by the hundreds, some opposition 
figures say ? people critical of Mr. Mugabe?s 
rule are being cornered on sidewalks, hauled to 
jails or simply abducted from their homes in 
early morning raids, and then savagely beaten.

The main faction of the leading opposition group, 
the Movement for Democratic Change, says that at 
least 500 of its members have been attacked in 
the last month. The numbers of attacks on civic 
advocates and other opposition figures is less clear but appears substantial.

Some of those attacked are left with fractured 
skulls or broken limbs. A few have been shot. At 
least one has been killed: a week ago, a 
65-year-old former cameraman for the 
state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting 
Corporation was found bludgeoned to death in a 
field 50 miles from his home in Glenview, a south 
Harare slum that is a locus of antigovernment sentiment.

[On Friday, a police spokesman in Harare said a 
murder investigation had been opened in the case.]

The cameraman, Edward Chikombo, was rumored to 
have sold to foreign broadcasters videotape of a 
March 11 police assault on antigovernment 
protesters that sent 50 activists to Harare 
hospitals. He was abducted from his home on March 
29 by a group of armed men driving a 4x4 vehicle, 
according to the Media Institute of Southern 
Africa, a regional journalist-rights organization.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/world/africa/08zimbabwe.html


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