Police charge women protestors in Zimbabwe

Baton-wielding Zimbabwe police charged women demonstrators marking United Nations’ International Women’s Day in the city of Bulawayo, injuring six and arresting 19, witnesses said.

The extent of the injuries was not immediately known, but some of the women were taken to the hospital bleeding and bruised, said Jenni Williams, who helped organise the march in Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe and an opposition stronghold.

Those arrested were later released without charge, Williams said.

No immediate comment was available from the police.

Marches were held in both Bulawayo, and the capital Harare in protest of violation of women’s rights under the increasingly repressive government of President Robert Mugabe.

One poster read, “Our daughters are not sex slaves.”

The women are demanding that Mugabe’s ruling party youth militias are disbanded immediately, the South African Press Association reported.

Women activists say that many young women are forced into joining the militias and then raped at training camps.

Demonstrators also held signs that read, “We want food our children.”

Almost half of Zimbabwe’s 13 million people face possible starvation as a food crisis grips the country caused by both erratic rainfall and the government’s chaotic and often violent seizure of white-owned commercial farms.

The government has been accused by diplomats and human rights groups of using food as a political weapon by favouring ruling party members during food distributions and sales.

The women also complained that the country’s collapsing economy had led to an inadequate supply of tampons and other health products for women.

The arrests at Saturday’s Bulawayo march come as security authorities after a wave of other recent arrests of government critics.

Among those arrested in the last two months have been priests, top lawyers, a judge, and journalists.