Harare - Zimbabwe police broke up a peaceful demonstration
of mostly women in the western city of Bulawayo Wednesday, arresting
nine and 'indiscriminately' beating up protesters calling for greater
freedom, activists said.
Nine demonstrators were arrested and lawyers were being refused
access to them in the city's main police station, said Jenni
Williams, leader of Women of Zimbabwe Arise, an outspoken group that
has been protesting for the last seven years against human rights
abuses and severe economic conditions.
Three women had to be treated for injuries after police attacked
the 900 protesters.
The incident took place in the midst of a tour of Western
countries by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, pro-democracy partner
with authoritarian president Robert Mugabe in a four-month-old power-
sharing transitional government.
Tsvangirai has been seeking aid to reconstruct the wrecked
economy, but Western governments have told him that no large-scale
financial help will come until there are major and irreversible
reforms to Mugabe's notorious record of human rights abuses.
Scores of WOZA demonstrations have been met with violence over the
last few years, and Williams has been arrested 33 times.
Hopes were high after the inauguration of the transitional
government that security authorities, who are under Mugabe's control,
would allow peaceful demonstrations in terms of the agreement between
Tsvangirai and 85-year-old Mugabe to ensure freedom of association
and of expression.
In February, shortly after the government of national unity was
sworn in, several WOZA activists were arrested in a demonstration,
and held for six days, but in April the organisation was able to
process without police intervention.
'The inauguration of the government of national unity was just an
event,' said Williams. 'Nothing has changed for ordinary people on
the ground. There is nothing this government has done to bring
relief. Life is still not liveable.'
The activists arrested in February were acquitted this week of
charges brought against them that the demonstration was 'conduct
likely to cause a breach of the peace.' The magistrate ruled that
WOZA had committed no offence.
Last week, said Williams, she and other WOZA leaders went to the
supreme court to challenge their arrests in June and October last
year when they were detrained for nine weeks. The state lawyer, she
said, 'conceded we had been illegally arrested, and that we were
peaceful demonstrators.'
'Now they are at it again,' she said. 'This shows the arrests and
the beatings have nothing to do with obtaining a conviction. They are
to demoralise activists with genuine grievances against the
government.'
The coalition government came out of tortuous negotiations
brokered by Southern African leaders following Mugabe's defeat in
presidential and parliamentary elections in March last year, and a
bloody presidential run-off won by Mugabe after his militias and
security forces murdered an estimated 200 supporters of Tsvangirai's
Movement for Democratic Change.
Despite this, Mugabe is seen as holding the balance of power in
the new regime.
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