THE ARREST and torture of peaceful protesters in Zimbabwe last weekend has been strongly condemned from within the country and from outside. The protest was organised by the Save Zimbabwe Campaign (SZC), a coalition of pro-democracy groups set up by the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance which was launched at the Anglican Cathedral in Bulawayo in 2005.
Prayers were to have been said after each speaker, thus circumventing the Zimbabwean Government’s ban on public rallies and demonstrations by turning the event into a prayer meeting. In the police brutality that followed, one man was killed and 100 arrested, including the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai.
Those arrested were beaten, held in police stations in Harare, and denied access to lawyers or doctors.
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights condemned the “flagrant disregard of human rights and police brutality”. The human-rights organisation ZimRights said in a statement: “We especially denounce police brutality in all its forms as manifested by the heavy-handed militaristic response of the police upon citizens who were peacefully gathering to pray for their country.”
Beatrice Mtetwa, a human rights lawyer in Harare, successfully applied for the detainees to be brought before the High Court on Tuesday to determine whether they had been lawfully imprisoned. The court ordered urgent medical attention for Mr Tsvangirai and other detainees, and told police to allow them immediate access to their lawyers.
Mr Tsvangirai’s lawyer, Innocent Chagonda, said that he had been detained “in a cell infested with lice.” Another detainee, Grace Kwinjeh, is said to have been brutally assaulted while in custody.
The Zimbabwe National Students Union described the country on Monday as “now a full-blown military and police dictatorship”.
David Coltart, the MP for Bulawayo and a human-rights lawyer and Shadow Minister of Justice, said the same massive international action was needed as had been used to combat apartheid.
Christian Aid’s Africa policy manager, Babatunde Olugboji, said “State services have all but collapsed. Aid agencies are playing a major role in keeping people off the bread line.”
Secular organisations and opposition groups had been persecuted for years for speaking out, he said. As those groups had been increasingly silenced, church agencies had been forced to stand up for basic human rights such as freedom of assembly and expression. The Zimbabwean Government had clamped down on their essential work through draconian laws.
Zimbabweans in the UK were preparing to demonstrate outside the Zimbabwe Embassy in London on Wednesday in protest at the arrests and torture. They were to be joined by supporters of the Zimbabwe Vigil, who have been demonstrating outside the Embassy every Saturday since October 2002 in support of free and fair elections and against human-rights abuses in Zimbabwe.
Participants at a seminar on southern Africa, instigated by the Westphalian Evangelical Church and held in Bielefeld, Germany, called for joint action by churches, allied development groups, and governments on land reform and justice for Zimbabwe.