Zimbabwe police "still arresting, assaulting demonstrators"

Jun 17, 2009, 17:18 GMT

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.