Lawyers call for access to Zimbabwe opposition leader

Zimbabwe’s government faced strong international condemnation after police crushed a prayer demonstration and allegedly tortured the country’s most prominent opposition leader and killed a pro-democracy activist.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, fainted three times after being beaten by police, according to the organisers of the “Save Zimbabwe” meeting – an alliance of opposition, civic, church leaders and student and anti-government groups.

Lawyers for Tsvangirai filed an urgent court order to allow them immediate access – and immediate medical treatment for – detainees.

The court papers said that Tsvangirai should either be charged or released today, within the usual 48 hours framework for such cases.

Zimbabwean police have routinely ignored such court orders in the past.

Tsvangirai and dozens of other pro-democracy demonstrators were arrested on Sunday when police broke up a planned prayer meeting. One opposition party activist was killed.

Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change said his wife was allowed to see him yesterday in a suburban jail and reported the wounds.

Susan Tsvangirai reported her husband was heavily bandaged, said his deputy, Movement for Democratic Change vice president Thoko Khupe. Some of the wounds were sutured and an eye was badly swollen.

“This is not consistent with the normal police brutality we have witnessed. The injuries were deliberate and an attempt to assassinate him,” said Eliphas Mukonoweshure, another top opposition official.

Lawyers were still being denied access to Tsvangirai, Khupe said.

The Save Zimbabwe Campaign also said another opposition leader, Lovemore Madhuku, was taken to the main Harare hospital early yesterday after collapsing from police assaults. He was reported in serious condition.

At least four other opposition and civic leaders were beaten and tortured in custody, the campaign said.

Opponents of President Robert Mugabe blame him for acute food shortages, record inflation of some 1,600% – the highest in the world – and repression and corruption. They have demanded the removal of 83-year-old Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s only ruler since independence from Britain in 1980.

Fliers for Sunday’s meeting, described as a prayer meeting, proclaimed: “Zimbabwe Will Be Saved.”

A US State Department spokesman condemned the police response to the protest and said the US was shocked by reports of injuries suffered by opposition leaders.

The attacks “were an indication of the repressive nature of the Mugabe dictatorship,” said the spokesman, Tom Casey.

The European Union criticised the suppression of the demonstration and condemned “the ongoing violent suppression of the freedom of opinion and of assembly, as well as of other fundamental rights.”

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark was more outspoken.

“I think the arrest of Morgan Tsvangirai is disgraceful and confirms everything we know about Zimbabwe as in effect a dictatorship,” Clark said.

South African trade unionists and opposition parties slammed the repression. But the government – which has used quiet diplomacy to try to sway Mugabe - remained silent, even though the country is reeling under the impact of an estimated 3 million illegal migrants fleeing the Zimbabwean meltdown.

A Harare freelance photographer, Tsvangirayi Mukwahzi, and a freelance television producer, Tendai Nusiyu, were among the journalists arrested at the scene.

Opposition party spokesman Khupe said police “unleashed a wave of indiscriminate violence” to clear people from the streets of the area where Sunday’s meeting had been planned. She also said police arrested at least 100 demonstrators suspected of protesting on Sunday’s arrests in the western city of Mutare yesterday.

“We are not trying to make headlines, we are just exercising our democratic rights,” Khupe said.

The opposition alliance said lawyers were still trying to establish the whereabouts of all those picked up by police, saying some were denied food or legal advice.

“Our just, legitimate and peaceful struggle will not cease,” the alliance said.

On Sunday, police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said police arrested Tsvangirai and other top party officials as they “instigated people to come out and commit acts of violence.”

He said one man was shot and killed when 200 opposition party “thugs” attacked about 20 policemen. The organisers identified the dead protester as Gift Tandare, an activist of Tsvangirai’s opposition group.

Police spokesman Bvudzijena told state television that three police officers were taken to hospital with injuries in the violence.

Authorities had declared the prayer meeting to be in breach of a three-month ban on political demonstrations. Riot and paramilitary police reinforcements, which had been deployed since Friday in the area where the prayer meeting was scheduled, sealed off approaches to a sports ground and fired tear gas to disperse the gathering.

Police spokesman Bvudzijena alleged that demonstrators tried to use children as human shields against the police and had picked up tear gas canisters and lobbed them back at police. He gave no figures of the number of arrests.