A Zimbabwean farmworker was killed and scores of others were seriously injured by army troops who invaded a farm leased by an opposition MP, his party alleged yesterday.
Steven Tonera, a security guard, was ”murdered by state agents” at a farm near the town of Ruwa, about 10 miles east of Harare, which is run by Roy Bennett of the Movement for Democratic Change, said a party spokesman.
About 80 other workers were whipped, beaten and clubbed by three truckloads of army troops, according to Mr Bennett, who added that several elderly women suffered broken arms and legs.
Human rights workers claim the army has also beaten and abducted about 100 opposition supporters in Harare townships.
”Their stories are all the same. The army arrived in trucks and started looking for opposition MPs or others associated with them and they beat up everyone,” said a health worker.
Harare’s hospitals struggled to cope with the influx of injured. The MDC said dozens were arrested by police or abducted by government supporters.
The attacks came in the wake of a two-day national strike called by the MDC to protest at Zimbabwe’s deepening crisis.
Tonera was abducted from the farm on Tuesday night and accused of burning a bus during the strike, Bennett told a news conference. The troops who descended on his land ”went on a rampage, indiscrimately assaulting men, women and children”, he added. Five of the injured showed their fresh wounds to journalists. – Guardian Unlimited Â