Zimbabwe: Opposition spokesman 'beaten at airport'

The spokesman for Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader was assaulted by security forces as he tried to leave the country, a party official said.

Nelson Chamisa, aide to Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai, was assaulted at Harare International Airport yesterday as he was leaving for Belgium via London to attend a meeting of the European Union and Africa Caribbean and Pacific group in Brussels, the party’s secretary-general, Tendai Biti, said from Johannesburg.

“He was beaten on the head with iron bars. There was blood all over his face. He is in a critical condition at a private hospital in Harare,” Biti said.

The assault follows the re-arrests at the airport on Saturday of three opposition activists, who were allegedly assaulted along with Tsvangirai when police broke up a March 11 protest meeting.

Meanwhile, President Robert Mugabe accused the opposition of being terrorists supported by Britain and the West, and Tsvangirai said the crisis in Zimbabwe had reached a “tipping point”.

Grace Kwinje and Sekai Holland, among the most severely injured in last week’s incident, were prevented from leaving to receive medical care, and Arthur Mutambara, leader of an opposition faction, was later also arrested at the airport.

Harrison Nkomo, a lawyer for Mutambara, said yesterday his client was being kept at the Harare central police station, and that he was being charged with inciting public violence in relation to last week’s incident.

He said lawyers were to apply to the High Court this morning for an urgent interdict to have him released.

“His detention is illegal and we want it declared unlawful and for him to be released forthwith,” Nkomo said.

Tawanda Mutasah, director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, said that Kwinje and Holland were due to travel to Johannesburg to receive specialist post-traumatic care.

He said the ambulance carrying the two women from Harare’s Avenues clinic to the airport, where they were to leave in a medical rescue aircraft, was stopped on the tarmac by officers from Zimbabwe’s security forces.

The women’s passports were taken and they were told they needed a clearance certificate from the Department of Health. They were then instructed to go to Harare’s central police station, but were later allowed to return to the clinic under police guard.

Mutasah’s organisation said in a statement issued yesterday that Holland, 64, was completely immobilised on her left side, having suffered multiple fractures including a broken arm and leg and three broken ribs.

She has undergone an operation on a fracture in her left ankle and has severe bruising causing internal complications.

The organisation quoted a statement by the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights which said that “injuries sustained by Sekai Holland were worsened by denial of timely access to medical treatment which led to an infection of deep soft tissue in her left leg”.

Kwinje suffered head injuries and extensive bruising. Damage to her right ear is thought to require reconstructive surgery, the statement said.

Zimbabwean police used tear gas, water cannon and live ammunition to crush the March 11 gathering, and beat activists, during and after arrests, according to opposition members.

The latest violence has drawn new attention to a deteriorating situation in the southern African country, where the increasingly autocratic Mugabe is blamed by opponents for repression, corruption, acute food shortages and inflation of 1,600% – the highest in the world.

Mugabe, 83, has rejected the international condemnation following the arrests and alleged beating, lashing out at critics and telling them to “go hang,” and he vowed to crackdown on further protests.

Speaking at a ceremony to mark International Women’s Day in Harare on Saturday, Mugabe accused the opposition party of resorting to violence sponsored by former colonial power Britain and other Western allies to oust his government, a newspaper reported.

“We have given too much room to mischief-makers and shameless stooges of the West. Let them and their masters know that we shall brook none of their lawless behaviour,” Mugabe was quoted as saying in the Sunday Mail.

“A new violence, sponsored and directed by our detractors, has been trying to rear its ugly head.

Scores of innocent people going about their legitimate business have fallen prey to terrorist attacks that are part of the desperate and illegal plot to unconstitutionally change the government of the country,” he said.

But Tsvangirai said Zimbabwe is facing a critical moment that could see the end of Mugabe’s dictatorship, speaking by telephone from Harare where he is recovering from injuries. Photographs of his battered face were printed in newspapers around the world.

“Things are bad,” Tsvangirai told the BBC’s Sunday AM programme, “but I think that this crisis has reached a tipping point, and we could see the beginning of the end of this dictatorship in whatever form.”

Tsvangirai left the hospital on Friday battered but defiant, pledging to “soldier on until Zimbabwe is free.” His supporters vowed to drive Mugabe from office with a campaign of civil disobedience.