Zimbabwe’s opposition had a successful day of campaigning despite attempts by ruling party militants to thwart election activities, party officials said on Sunday.
President Robert Mugabe’s supporters cordoned off the area where opposition leaders were to speak in a Harare suburb, preventing the opposition from going ahead with the rally, Movement for Democratic Change spokesperson Nelson Chamisa said.
However, two other gatherings went ahead as planned in Harare despite militants threatening and intimidating supporters at the venue, Chamisa said.
”The people are so strong and so courageous. It was very successful,” he said.
On Saturday, a court had struck down a police ban on opposition rallies.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai faces off against Mugabe in a presidential run-off on June 27. Tsvangirai won the most votes in the first round in March, but not enough to avoid a run-off.
Tsvangirai, meanwhile, continued campaigning on Sunday in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second main city, where he has been speaking to small groups
of voters around Bulawayo.
He also made a surprise visit at a small rally in Kwekwe, where he urged supporters to go and vote, the party said in a statement.
”The people have already won. The coming election would only reaffirm this victory,” Tsvangirai said. ”Zimbabweans would resoundingly defeat the regime and begin a new life with hope of a better Zimbabwe.”
However, the opposition said police attacked supporters in Bulawayo and prevented them from putting up election campaign posters.
A team of four party members were putting up posters when they were confronted by police and other security forces who told them that ”it was Mugabe’s country and only Mugabe could put posters on street poles and the MDC would not be allowed,” the opposition said in a statement.
The team continued on to the railway station, but were followed by police in riot gear and on bicycles, the party said. The police assaulted the MDC members with baton sticks. One person suffered a broken leg and was admitted to hospital.
Comment from the police was not immediately available.
Police state
Tsvangirai’s spokesperson, George Sibotshiwe, said Mugabe has turned Zimbabwe into a police state.
”The regime is denying the people their fundamental rights in order to steal the June 27 election and subvert the will of the Zimbabwean people through widespread violence and killings, wanton arrests and by closing political space for the MDC to campaign,” he said.
Also Sunday, a court ordered police to release opposition lawmaker Eric Matinenga, who was taken from his home on Saturday and detained at a station outside the capital. He was accused of fomenting violence, lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said.
Matinenga, also detained on similar charges earlier in the week but released because of a lack of evidence, is among scores of opposition activists arrested in recent weeks. Matinenga, himself an attorney, has represented opposition leaders in a string of high-profile court cases.
The opposition and rights groups cite a rise in violence and intimidation in the run-up to the vote. Tsvangirai’s party, blaming state agents, says at least 60 of its supporters have been slain in the past two months.
Tsvangirai, who his party says has been the target of at least three assassination attempts, left Zimbabwe after the March vote, but returned in late May to campaign for the run-off.
Injuries
About 2 900 victims of political violence have been treated in hospital since
elections on March 29, medical specialists said on Sunday.
The Specialist Doctors in Zimbabwe, comprising surgeons, anaesthetists, physicians and paediatricians, said in a statement that over 200 people had had to be hospitalised with injuries and complications as a result of injuries.
”Sadly, a number have succumbed to these injuries,” the organisation said, without giving details.
The statement added that ”there have been reports of some members of the profession being involved in violence,” and said members of the association ”dissociate ourselves from any members who may be directly or indirectly involved in violence”.
The statement did not name anyone. In April however, reports cited Zimbabwe Health Minister David Parirenyatwa, a medical doctor, as appearing before a rally of President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, brandishing an AK47 assault rifle in front of frightened villagers.
The National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (NASCOH) on Sunday warned the violence ”will continue to haunt its victims, and society, long after the violence has ended”.
”Limbs have been severed and mutilated, thus adding to the physical disability population. People have been subjected to such brutal head injuries that their sight and hearing has been affected, while some have been traumatised so much by the intensity and brutality of the violence that they have joined the ranks of the mentally challenged.”
Some children, the association added, had also been beaten up and forced to witness the their parents and other relatives being beaten or tortured.
”These children have been scarred and traumatized for life,” the NASCOH said. ”They have been deprived of their future.”
According to human rights workers and doctors treating the injured, the victims have identified members of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF militia, the army and police as the perpetrators, except in a tiny minority of cases, when MDC activists have retaliated. – Sapa-DPA, Sapa-AP