[Marxism] (Fwd) Zim fascism (cont.)

[Patrick Bond <pbond@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Harare crackdown on opposition sends 600 to hospitals
- doctors

author/source:VOA News
published:Fri 6-Apr-2007
posted on this site:Sat 7-Apr-2007

Article Type : News

Abducted activists are being dumped mainly in remote
areas of Mashonaland Central and Mashonaland West -
both provinces dominated by the ruling Zanu PF party

By Blessing Zulu

Washington - Doctors caring for the victims of the
Zimbabwe government's ongoing crackdown on officials
and members of the political and civic opposition say
they have treated some 600 activists in the Harare,
the capital, and eastern Mutare alone since mid-March.
Opposition sources said authorities have targeted both
factions of the Movement for Democratic Change -
though in particular the faction led by party founder
Morgan Tsvangirai - members of the National
Constitutional Assembly, a prominent civic group, and
the Combined Harare Residents Association. Hospital
data indicate that in Harare alone, 500 activists have
been treated after being abducted by suspected
government agents, tortured, then dumped by roadsides.
The hospital sources estimated that there have been
about 100 cases in Mutare.

Sources also told VOA that agents of the feared
Central Intelligence Organization are now operating
under police uniform cover while abducting activists.
Even in police detention, activists are being beaten
and tortured, opposition sources said. Police
Commissioner Augustine Chihuri justified the
continuing crackdown with the charge that opposition
forces were engaging in "acts of domestic terrorism."
Journalist Edward Chikomba was abducted on Saturday,
April 7, and found dead one day later on Sunday, April
8. The Independent newspaper of London reported the he
had been murdered for smuggling a video out of the
country that showed how badly Tsvangirai had been
beaten while in police custody from March 11 to March
13.

Abducted activists are being dumped mainly in remote
areas of Mashonaland Central and Mashonaland West -
both provinces dominated by the ruling Zanu PF party.
But abductions are being reported in other towns and
in rural areas. In Masvingo two MDC youth activists,
Gilson Magazini and Trymore Manyuchi, were abducted
Thursday by men in police uniforms and have not been
seen since. Lawyer Tongai Matutu, a member of
parliament for the MDC Tsvangirai faction told VOA
that Masvingo police told him they have no record of
arresting or detaining the two youths. Meanwhile.
police continued to hold 10 of 11 MDC officials and
members granted bail on Thursday by the Harare
magistrate and high courts. The activists have denied
charges that they organized a recent spate of
firebombings of police posts.

Attorney Alec Muchadehama, representing the activists,
said that by the time lawyers had obtained release
orders, the court clerk to whom they had to be
submitted had left before schedule and so his clients
were taken back into custody by police. Police
continued to defy a high court order instructing them
to return computers and documents seized in a March 28
raid on the headquarters of the Tsvangirai faction.
Authorities said the raid was staged to search for
evidence related to the firebombing attacks last
month. But opposition officials said the police left a
trail of destruction behind them, knocking down doors
and destroying furniture and computers. The 10 faction
members being held by Harare police were arrested that
day. Faction spokesman Nelson Chamisa said the
government's intention in seizing or destroying MDC
equipment was to paralyze the political opposition.
_____________________________________________

Cameraman battered to death

author/source:Times (UK)
published:Sat 7-Apr-2007
posted on this site:Sat 7-Apr-2007

Article Type : News

"It's just out of control"

Jan Raath in Harare

Police are investigating the murder of a Zimbabwean
freelance cameraman - abducted last week - after the
discovery of his battered body. Edward Chikomba, aged
in his mid-sixties, was snatched from his home in
Harare last Thursday by seven gunmen. His body was
found on a farm 80km (50 miles) away. Human rights
organisations have accused the government of deploying
secret police "hit squads" to kidnap members of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) with
the aim of intimidating them. Mr Chikomba, who was
married with four children, was said to be a "passive"
MDC supporter although his family said that they could
not be certain why he was seized. He worked part-time
for state television and a company supplying footage
to foreign television stations.

However, in the onslaught of police violence since
March 11 when MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and 30
others, mostly senior party officials, were savagely
beaten for attempting to participate in a prayer
rally, random assault has become a fixed pattern.
Yesterday, a Harare resident who asked not to be named
described how he had seen a group of riot police on
Saturday on foot patrol in central Harare pick out
four youths together in the busy forecourt of a
service station. "They motioned the kids to come to
them, they ordered them to lie on the ground and then
beat them with their sticks. Then they told them to
roll over, and beat them again, and then told them to
go away. They had done nothing," he said. "It's just
out of control." President Mugbe has endorsed the
right of police to "bash" opposition supporters.

On Sunday last week, Gift Phiri, 30, senior political
reporter for The Zimbabwean, a weekly paper printed in
London and distributed in Zimbabwe and among members
of the three-million strong Zimbabwean diaspora mostly
in South Africa and Britain, was followed by
plainclothes police into a Harare supermarket and
accosted at the till as he paid for his groceries. In
bed yesterday in a Harare hospital with severe
bruising all over his body and possible fractures to
his hand and his ulna, he said they interrogated him
in the office in Harare central police station of the
chief superintendent of the law and order section,
about reports published in The Zimbabwean, including a
regular column naming notorious police officers, and
called "the roll of shame." They demanded he tell him
his sources of information, and when he refused, they
said, "You are wasting our time."

They forced him to lie on the ground and beat him with
metre-long rubber sticks and a baseball bat, mostly on
the buttocks and the back of his thighs. "Then they
made me stand up and do the Zanu PF salute and chant
"pamberi ne Mugabe" [forward with Mugabe]. Then they
turned on the radio that was playing music and made me
dance, and they beat me as I danced. It went on for an
hour, on and off, they took turns. They were drunk. I
could smell alcohol on their breath. The pain was
excruciating. It was so much, I have never found pain
like that before. I was screaming. My skin is till
burning all over," he said. Wracked with pain, he
could not sleep that night, with five others in a tiny
cell whose floor was awash with urine and faeces, with
a leaking sewer pipe in the roof.

The next day they beat him again, on his already
severely bruised body, for about 20 minutes. "They
accused me of insulting Mugabe, they said I wanted to
overthrow him but that he would be there for a
thousand years. They said, 'We are going to crush you
journalists, you are trying to cause alarm and
despondency and inciting people to rise up against the
government'." He was released on Thursday, after a
high court order instructing police to bring him
before a magistrate, who granted him bail. His wife,
Tevedzerai, was "devastated," he said. "She has been
crying all the time. When she came to see me in the
cells, I could see she was crying. When she saw my
wounds, she cried. Now she says she is having
nightmares."

Mr Phiri is not the first journalist to have suffered
police assault in the last month. On March 11, two
freelance photographers were picked up and beaten
along with Mr Tsvangirai in a township police station,
and had their cameras smashed. Both hold
officially-issued media accreditation cards. Another
journalist, Luke Tamborinyoka, is among about 20 MDC
supporters still in custody on allegations of
involvement in a series of bombing attacks, and was
also assaulted.

MDC activist shot, in critical state

author/source:Standard (Zimb)
published:Sun 8-Apr-2007
posted on this site:Sun 8-Apr-2007

Article Type : News

Their lawyer, Otto Saki, yesterday confirmed he was
working on Katsande's case but was still struggling to
locate three other MDC activists allegedly abducted on
the same night

By our staff

An opposition activist was battling for his life at
Parirenyatwa Hospital last night after being shot in
the chest at his house early yesterday as security
agents continue to abduct and torture members of the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Philip Katsande,
a provincial executive member of the MDC, was shot
once in the chest by police, The Standard was told
yesterday. MDC sources said yesterday police officers
came to Katsande's Budiriro 1 house around 1AM and
started smashing windows and doors. Katsande sought
refuge in the ceiling. "The police officers started
beating up his wife and kids," said the sources,
"until they revealed that he was in the ceiling. One
police officer fired three shots at him and he dropped
to the ground." Katsande, who belongs to the Morgan
Tsvangirai faction, was later rushed to Parirenyatwa
Hospital where he is receiving treatment under police
guard. Katsande's wife, Agnes, yesterday refused to
comment for fear of further attacks from the police.
"We are just coming from the hospital to see him, I
can only talk if you get permission from him," said
the wife before switching off her mobile phone. Police
spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena
was not immediately available for comment yesterday.
His mobile phone went unanswered for the better part
of the day. MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa said their
lawyer, Otto Saki, yesterday confirmed he was working
on Katsande's case but was still struggling to locate
three other MDC activists, allegedly abducted on the
same night.

________________________________________________

Mugabe launches a holy war

The First Post

President Robert Mugabe's state terror police, the
Central Intelligence Organisation, celebrated Easter
Sunday by storming into a church in the capital
Harare, beating up the congregation and arresting two
pastors.

One witness, who escaped with minor bruising to the
shoulder, said the assault occurred at around 7pm at
the Apostolic Mission Church's Easter Sunday evening
service. During the traditional Prayer For The Nation,
Pastor Alison Sibanda called on worshippers to pray
for a morally upright leader, saying: "Good leaders
are ordained by God. But the present one is not from
God."

It is believed that among the congregation were
members of the CIO, who then left the church to report
on what they had heard.

Thirty minutes later, two truckloads of police charged
into the church and used their batons to disperse

Storming an Easter service, the police charged two
pastors with inciting violence
 the congregation. Several people suffered injuries
and required medical treatment. Money donated by
worshippers during the service is said to have gone
missing.

Sibanda and another pastor, Dumisani Nyoni, were
arrested for inciting violence. It is not yet known
whether they are still in custody.

Since the state claims that prayer meetings are now a
platform for opposition parties to spread the message
of protest, similar attacks can be expected in the
future.

But the country's Christians will be heartened by the
Easter message from Pope Benedict XVI, who said:
"Zimbabwe is in the grip of a grievous crisis, and for
this reason the bishops of that country in a recent
document indicated that prayer and a shared commitment
for the common good is the only way forward."

FIRST POSTED APRIL 9, 2007


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