Mugabe: Crackdown on dissent will continue

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe vowed today his government will not tolerate dissent created “under the guise of freedom of expression".

Mugabe said law-enforcement agencies would continue to crush dissent because government opponents were bent on creating anarchy, while claiming their protests were a constitutional right for freedom of expression and movement.

“The use of such a platform for the British regime-change agenda will not be tolerated. Law enforcement will continue to quash them,” he told the Harare parliament in an annual state-of-the-nation address.

In September, police thwarted a march by the main labour federation in Harare, which was protesting about deepening poverty.

At least 16 labour leaders were assaulted by police, several of them suffering bone fractures and other injuries, according to independent doctors and human-rights organisations.

Mugabe said afterwards that the labour leaders had been resisting arrest for holding a banned protest and “reasonable force” was used to break up the march.