In Zimbabwe Raid, Hundreds in Opposition Party Detained
Armed police officers raided the headquarters of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party in Harare, the capital, on Friday, detaining hundreds of opposition supporters, a spokesman for the party said.
The action appeared to be one of the most blatant crackdowns on the opposition since the disputed elections nearly four weeks ago.
The spokesman, Nqobizitha Mlilo, said in an e-mailed statement that about 200 to 250 heavily armed police officers had raided the offices of the party, the Movement for Democratic Change. Other reports put the number of police officers at “dozens.”
In a separate raid on the offices of independent election observers, the police seized vote count materials, The Associated Press reported.
The opposition’s headquarters building, called Harvest House, in downtown Harare, had become a refuge for opposition supporters fleeing what they say is widespread political violence by government forces across the country since the presidential and parliamentary elections on March 29.
“These armed police have taken hundreds of people that were now staying at the party headquarters running away from the different parts of Zimbabwe, where the regime has been unleashing brutal violence,” Mr Mlilo said in a statement.
In a later statement, the MDC said the number arrested had risen to 300 people, including all staff members.
The police searched for documents used by the opposition to support its claim it won the presidential election, and had also taken away computers, Mr Mlilo said.
A witness was quoted by Reuters as saying that dozens of riot police detained around 100 opposition supporters, loading them into a crowded police bus before taking them away.
A police spokesman said the raid was an attempt to seize people who the authorities believed had committed crimes outside Harare.
“Some of them are not office workers at all,” the police spokesman, Wayne Bvudzijena, said, according to Reuters. “We are busy screening them. There are some cases we are investigating and we will release those who have not committed any crime.”
“They took everyone in the building, including those who had come just to seek medical care,” another opposition spokesman, Nelson Chamisa, told Reuters. “They are trying to destroy evidence of their brutality,”
On Thursday, the top American envoy to Africa declared that the main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, was the “clear victor” over President Robert Mugabe in last month’s election and called on other countries - including the United States - to help solve the deepening political and humanitarian crisis there.
The diplomat, Jendayi Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said the election results, based on projections by independent monitors, removed the rationale for any negotiated settlement that left Mr Mugabe in charge, as was proposed Wednesday in an editorial in The Herald, the state-run newspaper.
“This is a government rejecting the will of the people,” Ms Frazer said, referring to the Zimbabwe electoral commission’s refusal to announce who won the March 29 presidential election. “If they had voted for Mugabe, the results would already have been announced. Everyone knows what time it is.”
The United States has deferred in recent years to South Africa, the region’s most powerful nation, to mediate between ZANU PF, Zimbabwe’s governing party, and its political rivals.
But at a news briefing on Thursday in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital, Ms Frazer said the severity of the human rights violations by state-sponsored groups against opposition supporters now required the involvement of more players: the African Union, the United Nations and other nations, including the United States.
“We can’t stand back and wait for this to escalate further,” she said.
(Source)
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