A Zimbabwean opposition activist was in critical condition in hospital in Harare on Monday after being shot several days ago — reportedly by police.
Philip Katsande, a provincial official with the Movement for Democratic Change was shot during a police raid on his home late on Thursday, a party spokesperson said.
”It’s a very critical condition. He still has that bullet that has not been taken out,” party spokesperson Nelson Chamisa told Deutsche Presse-Agentur referring to a bullet lodged in Katsande’s chest. He was also hit in the hands, the MDC said.
Lawyers for Katsande were seeking to have him moved to a private clinic from Harare’s Parirenyatwa Hospital, where he was under police guard.
The shooting comes amid a police crackdown on opposition figures in the wake of the arrest and beating of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and other opposition figures after an aborted prayer rally on March 11.
Police say they are hunting for suspects behind a string of petrol bomb attacks on police stations and other targets that have left several injured over the past month, for which they pointing the finger at the MDC. The MDC has denied the allegations of wrongdoing.
The attack on Katsande comes days after the badly-beaten body of an abducted television cameraman, Edward Chikomba, was found on the outskirts of Harare, in a killing some suspect was linked to his work.
Chikomba allegedly leaked footage to foreign media of a badly beaten Tsvangirai after his release from police custody last month — images that provoked a torrent of international condemnation of the regime of Robert Mugabe.
Meanwhile the government shrugged off an impassioned appeal by the country’s Roman Catholic bishops for democratic reform to avert a ”mass uprising”.
Reacting to a pastoral letter from the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference pasted on church doors on Easter Sunday, Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said he ”respected their opinion” and that the bishops were ”free to say what they like”, South African public radio reported.
Worshippers crowded around church notice boards after mass on Easter Sunday to read the pastoral letter entitled God Hears the Cries of the Oppressed, which lamented state ”arrests, detentions, banning orders, beatings and torture” and ”vote-rigging”.
”Oppression is sin,” the bishops warned President Robert Mugabe, himself a Catholic, adding: ”In order to avoid bloodshed and a mass uprising, the nation needs a new people-driven constitution” under which to hold ”free and fair elections”. – Sapa-DPA