A group of 48 women demonstrators, four of them with babies, were facing a second night in police cells in the western city of Bulawayo on Friday for allegedly being part of an ”unlawful gathering”.
Lawyers were trying to secure the release of the women and the infants but relatives said they feared that they would continue to be held throughout the weekend.
They were arrested in Bulawayo on Thursday after protesting against draconian legislation that legal experts say gives the government powers almost identical to a state of emergency, including random arrest, outlawing demonstrations and jailing journalists for criticising the regime.
Eyewitnesses said the police first arrested a few of the leaders of the demonstration, organised by Concerned Citizens of Zimbabwe, a coalition of civic organisations.
Many of the other demonstrators then voluntarily handed themselves over to police, some of them climbing into police vehicles to join their arrested colleagues.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said ruling party vigilantes in the last three days had embarked on a campaign of violent
intimidation in urban areas around the country to force opposition candidates to withdraw from local government elections next month.
MDC spokesperson Paul Themba Nyathi said candidates’ homes in the towns of Kariba in remote northern Zimbabwe and in Marondera had been attacked, and candidates had been threatened with death.
Earlier this week three MDC candidates were in hospital, one of them with a broken neck, after ruling party militiamen forcibly barred them from registering as candidates.
The incidents came amid growing international pressure on President Robert Mugabe’s government and on the opposition MDC to begin negotiations to end the country’s political and economic crisis.
Observers also said that signs of hope for talks emerged mid-week when the pro-democracy party called off a scheduled walk-out of Mugabe’s annual address at the opening of Parliament, which was followed by a cautious welcome by Mugabe, who spoke of ”our brothers and sisters in the opposition”.
Human rights organisations say random arrests, violent suppression of opposition supporters and denial of the protection of the law for victims of state-driven violence is the order of the day as 79-year- old Mugabe clings to power after 23 years in office. – Sapa-DPA